


The Department of Unsolved Cases

by trailsofpaper (Sanwall)



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1990s, Canon-Typical Violence, Getting Together, M/M, Pining, Sex, but like x-files canon not bfu canon, x-files au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-09 18:24:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13487145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanwall/pseuds/trailsofpaper
Summary: Ryan Bergara hasn’t been an FBI agent for long, but he’s seen enough inexplicable things during his career to know there’s more to the world than meets the eye. He comes up against the stubbornly skeptic Shane Madej, head of the Unsolved Cases department - the basement where low-priority cases go to die.The case of possible alien abductions and UFO sightings become top-priority very soon however, and Ryan starts to think that maybe Shane has a reason for wanting to stay on the Unsolved Cases even though he used to have a very promising FBI career in front of him.Come to think of it, maybe Ryan also has his reasons for wanting to stay by Shane’s side even when things get rocky.





	1. Episode 1, Part I

**Author's Note:**

> You’d think Ryan is Mulder and Shane is Scully, but turns out it’s not that clear-cut. It’s more like, Shane is Mulder if Mulder didn’t believe jack shit and Ryan is a Scully who believes with their whole heart. Also, for being FBI agents, they’re kind of incompetent. Procedure? They don’t know her.
> 
> Anyway, do not in any shape, way or form bring this to the attention of any involved in Buzzfeed Unsolved; this is obviously made up and not even really about them, thank you.
> 
> Also, there are kind of spoilers for general concepts in the first season of X-files, but you don’t have to have watched it to understand this fic. All you need to know is that this takes place in the early 90s, so they don’t have smartphones and their suits and ties are probably comically large.
> 
> I want to thank my wonderful beta readers @salfarn and @laufarn without whose enthusiasm and cheerleading this might not have got written at all!
> 
> You can come talk to me about Shane/Ryan and/or X-files anytime on tumblr @trailsofpaper

Ryan Bergara fiddled endlessly with his tie and had to take several calming breaths on his way down in the elevator.

_Keep it together Bergara. You graduated top of your class from Quantico. You’re going to be fine._

The elevator came to a juddering halt and Ryan felt like he’d left his stomach on the floor above. As the doors slid open, Ryan took one last fortifying gulp of air and entered into the hallway. It took him a second to register the rundown state of things - the peeling green wallpaper, the irregular flickering of one of the fluorescent ceiling lights. He swallowed and moved past it, and then he was in front of the door. It was unmarked, but it had to be it. It was the only door down here.

Ryan knocked and then remembered one of his tutors saying “project that confidence!” and that was why he opened the door before hearing an answer.

The room inside wasn’t what he had been expecting. Ryan wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but two desks cluttered with minutiae  and a row of dusty filing cabinets  and a forlorn fax machine hadn’t been it. The shelves lining the walls were filled with folders, and the vision board on the far wall had several photos and objects pinned to it, but it looked like it hadn’t been touched in ages. Ryan’s eyes moved instinctively to the man sitting at one of the desks. He was hunched over the desktop, but he’d moved his head at the sound of the door and was half turned towards it as a result.

“Come on in,” the man said. There was obvious irony coloring his words as Ryan had already entered, standing awkwardly just inside the doorway.

Ryan wasn’t sure that he had imagined his voice being any particular way, but at least he knew this wasn’t what he had imagined. The man - Shane Madej himself -  blinked back at him from behind his glasses, and Ryan started into action.

“Special Agent Madej. I’m Special Agent Ryan Bergara,” he said. “I was sent here to, uh- I’ve been assigned to working with you.”

“I’m sorry,” Madej said and leaned back in his chair, throwing his hands out in a wide gesture. “Nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted. Who’d you piss off to end up with me?”

Ryan gave a nervous chuckle - he was self-conscious about his laugh, but this one seemed to slip out without his express permission. “No one. I look forward to working with you.”

It wasn’t, strictly speaking, true. Ryan _had_ been sent down here, not because they thought he’d be the best man for the job but because no one else wanted to work with him anymore, and because he was the _only_ man for the job. He just figured he wanted to make the best of it. His words had Madej cocking his head like a bird. He then stood up, unfolding his long body like - well, like a stork, in Ryan’s professional opinion. Shane Madej seemed to be made out of eighty percent limbs.

He was dressed in the requisite slacks, but he’d discarded both his jacket and tie during the day, and Ryan found his gaze inexplicably drawn to the little v of exposed skin at the collar of his white dress shirt when Madej reached out a hand. Ryan clasped his hand to shake it, noting that his palm was warm and dry. Even though Ryan by no means had small hands, his seemed nearly dwarfed by Madej’s long fingers, and he swallowed as they did a perfunctory up-and-down. “If you have any questions about my qualifications or-”

“You were stationed at the Information and Technology Branch of the FBI and you have a masters in engineering and an undergraduate in criminology,” Madej said and reached over to pluck a paper from his desk and Ryan watched him take off his glasses to read from it:

 _“Einstein's Twin Paradox, A Non Space-Time Approach. Ryan Bergara’s Senior Thesis.”_ He looked up at Ryan over the rim of his glasses. “Now that's something, an undergrad arguing with Einstein.”

Ryan had to fight the impulse to fiddle with his own cufflinks. Instead he met Madej’s gaze. His eyes were narrowed and almond-shaped, gaze oddly piercing. His nose was also bird-like, a predatory arc that narrowed to a point.

“You read it,” Ryan said, and it was meant as a question but it came out completely flat. Madej shrugged and put the paper down, settling his entire lanky frame on the edge of the desk.

“Sure I read it,” he said. “I liked it.”

“You liked it,” Ryan repeated, another nervous laugh escaping him. “Wow. That’s a first.”

If Ryan was prone to doubt his own eyes, he would have doubted the quick wink Madej sent his way before he moved over to the slide projector in the middle of the room. He clicked a canister into place before walking past Ryan to turn off the lights.

“So, Special Agent Bergara, can I get your professional opinion on this one?” Madej asked, and Ryan didn’t like the flippant tone but he took out his glasses from his breast pocket and placed them on his nose to take a good look at the picture.

“From Oregon, age twenty-two, no explainable cause of death,” Madej narrated as Ryan inspected the image of a young man, obviously dead going by the wax-like state of his skin. ”Autopsy shows us nothing at all.”

Madej reached past Ryan to change the slide, and Ryan blinked as the picture changed. He used the frames of his glasses to point at the picture. “This though, see these two distinct marks on his lower back? What would you say they are?” he asked, and the flippant tone had given way to something that Ryan was loath to call excitement, but didn’t quite fit anything else.

“Needle punctures or an animal bite. Maybe electrocution of some kind,” Ryan said, half to himself as he inspected the grainy image, and his fingers itched for pen and paper to write down his observations.

“You,” Madej said. “I like you. All right, let’s head for Oregon!”

Ryan had to blink and turn on his heel to follow Madej with his eyes.

“I’m sorry what?” he said, but Madej was already by the door, his suit jacket in hand.

“For some reason, it’s Bureau policy to stuff all unexplained phenomena down here in the Unsolved Cases archive and never think about them again,” Madej said, shrugging the jacket on and pulling a wrinkled tie from his pocket. “Maybe you can help me solve them.”

* * *

“Okay, what I don’t get,” Ryan said, after they’d been sitting in complete silence on the plane for what felt like hours, Ryan going through the file on the case and Madej carelessly eating peanuts. Madej was folded into the window seat, and Ryan didn’t even begrudge him for it. He turned towards Ryan in the middle seat and raised his eyebrows. Ryan wet his lips and continued, "You’re regarded as the Bureau’s top analyst in the violent crimes section and a renowned medical examiner. Why would you settle for handling the Unsolved department, where all the low-priority cases end up?”

Madej’s mouth quirked into a smile. Ryan vaguely registered the pilot over the intercom, asking them to fasten their seatbelts for the descent.

“I could ask you the same,” Madej said, and Ryan had a reply ready on his tongue when the lights on the plane flickered out. The plane started to shake violently. A nervous murmur went up the aisle and someone screamed as luggage fell to the floor from the overhead compartment with a crash. Ryan didn’t exactly pride himself on being brave - but he was still a goddamn FBI agent, and he felt the hot surge of embarrassment in the pit of his stomach when he instinctively grabbed Madej’s arm instead of the armrest. Special Agent Madej didn’t blink. Instead he smiled and leaned back in his seat.

“Some turbulence, huh?” he said when the shaking abated and the lights flickered back on.

“Yeah,” Ryan replied, but he couldn’t shake the bad feeling left over, not even when they touched down and disembarked without incident.

* * *

Madej had folded himself into the passenger seat of the rental car without saying anything, so Ryan shrugged and got in behind the wheel. As they were driving through rural Oregon and finally passed the road sign telling them they had entered the right city, Ryan tapped the steering wheel and tried to think of the best way to broach the other subject that had been weighing on his mind.

“So, what exactly did you find out about this case that led you to re-open it?” he asked, because when all else failed, why not be bruisingly direct? Madej didn’t even bat an eyelash. Without taking his eyes off the roadside he replied with another question:

“Do you have any theories?”

Ryan inhaled deeply through his nose. The radio station was playing something with twanging guitars that grated on his nerves.

“I mean,” he said and cleared his throat. “This man is not the only one to die under similar circumstances in this town. But while the autopsy reports of the first three victims show no unidentified marks, his does.”

“Mm-hm,” Madej said, an encouraging up-tilt to his voice, like he wanted Ryan to keep going.

“The difference is those reports were signed by another medical examiner than the latest victim,” Ryan said, and tried not to feel vindicated when out of the corner of his eye he could see Madej sit up straighter in his seat and grin brightly. “Is the medical examiner a suspect?” Ryan asked and turned the steering wheel for the first time in probably half an hour, to avoid a pothole in the worn asphalt.

“We’re going to dig up the bodies and see for ourselves!” Madej said, and Ryan didn’t know whether or not his cheerful tone was off-putting or reassuring.

That was the moment the radio broke up into static before starting to flicker through wavelengths, only bursts of indecipherable chatter breaking through. Ryan frowned and glanced at it, noticing that not only was the radio messed up, the clock on the dashboard was flitting through timestamps at random. When the radio noise crescendoed into a high-pitched shriek, Ryan turned the wheel and stepped on the brake. He saw Madej cover his ears and hunch his shoulders, but he ignored him and flung the door open to get outside.

Ryan opened the trunk and rooted through his bag, aware that his breathing was frantic and that his hair had settled in a sweaty fringe across his forehead. Angrily he wiped it aside with the back of his hand and finally found what he was looking for. He backtracked on the empty road, peering at the trees surrounding them to orient himself, and when he reached the spot he was estimating the disturbance had started, he aimed the can of spray paint at the asphalt and painted a huge cross.

“X marks the spot,” Madej said, as he came up behind Ryan. The hair at the back of Ryan’s neck stood up, but if it was from the ominous atmosphere or just the proximity of Madej’s body, he didn’t know. Beside him, he felt Madej put his hands in his own pockets and shift his weight from foot to foot before saying, “What is this about, Special Agent Bergara?”

“Probably nothing,” Ryan said, squinting up at the white sky before turning back to the car.

* * *

Soon houses started to pop up on the roadside, the forest thinning out into neatly dotted trees and hedges, and before they knew it, they had arrived at the cemetery. The exhuming had already started, several men in long coats standing beside the excavator that was noisily shuffling dirt. The man from the County Coroner’s office introduced himself when Ryan and Madej got out of the car, and then he immediately turned and signaled to the operator of the excavator to get on with it.

“John Blaney was the third victim. After graduating high school, he spent time in a state mental hospital treated for post-adolescent schizophrenia.” Madej said out of the corner of his mouth to Ryan, hands in his pockets. “He actually confessed to the first two murders. He wanted to be locked up but he couldn't prove he committed the crimes. Did you read his cause of death?”

“Exposure,” Ryan said and pulled at his tie to loosen it a little bit. “Seven hours out in the woods on a summer’s night in Oregon.”

“So you’d agree with my conjecture that it’s, ah, horse shit?” Madej said, and he had an inflection on _horse shit_ , like he was quoting something official, and Ryan felt a laugh bubble up. The easy-going atmosphere was welcome if unexpected at the cemetery. However, it dissipated abruptly when another car pulled up and out stepped a man in his fifties, greying hair standing on end as he approached the two FBI agents with an aggressive stride.

“What are you two doing here?” he demanded to know, and Ryan’s hands came up in a placating gesture.

“We’re only doing our job, mister...?” he said, inflecting his voice with just enough polite interest that the man lost a little steam and replied:

“I’m Nathan Sutcliffe, the medical examiner on this case.” A young woman stepped out of the car as well and called for Mr. Sutcliffe, who seemed to find his anger again. He jabbed a finger at Ryan’s chest, but Ryan stood his ground. “And _you_ think I haven’t done my job, is that it?”

Ryan felt Madej step up behind him, and it was oddly reassuring to know someone had his back. Before either of them could say anything though, the young woman - a girl, really - came up and put her hand on Sutcliffe’s arm.

“Dad, let’s go home. Please.”

“We just have some additional questions that your report doesn’t answer,” Madej said, disarmingly enough. Between that and his daughter’s hand on his arm, Sutcliffe seemed to relent, and he stalked back to his car with one last, dirty look over his shoulder at them. As they drove away, there was a shout behind Ryan and Madej, and they turned just in time to see the coffin fall from the contraption used to lift it up from the ground. It landed on the overturned dirt with a loud crack and rolled over. Madej and Ryan exchanged one look with each other before they both rushed over.

“That’s not a human body,” were the first words out of Ryan’s mouth as he stared at the contents of the coffin, the lid cracked open by the impact.

“Kind of a morbid practical joke, wouldn’t you say?” Madej said with his eyes glued to the desiccated and vaguely humanoid grey shape laid out like a corpse. Ryan turned to him in an outraged huff, but Madej was already turning to the county coroner, requesting transportation to the facilities to analyze the coffin contents. Ryan decided to swallow his comments until they had lab results. He wished he could swallow his heart lodged in his throat just as easily.

* * *

“I mean, it’s gotta be a primate of some sort,” Madej said, staring intently at the X-rays they’d brought with them to the motel rooms they were staying in. Ryan sighed deeply as he sat down on the made bed, bouncing a little on the too-hard surface.

“It’s not a rubber suit, that’s for certain,” he said and pinched the bridge of his nose. The lights in the county coroner’s office had been too bright, and the examination of the corpse in the coffin - because it was a corpse, just not human - had raised more questions than it had answered.

“Hmm,” Madej said noncommittally, bent almost in half to squint at the X-rays Ryan had stacked on the dresser.

“Dude, are you seriously not even considering it?” Ryan said, staring at him and willing him to straighten the fuck up and look him in the eye. Madej only turned his head to acknowledge him, not even deigning to take his eyes off the X-ray.

“Dude?” he repeated, a hint of laughter in his voice. Ryan rolled his eyes and stood up.

“Alien abduction, alien body,” he said. That, at least, had Madej straightening up and turning towards him.

“You’re not serious,” he said, still some of that humor inflecting his voice. Ryan shrugged.

“When all plausible explanations fall short, don’t we have to consider the implausible?” he said. “Now, get out of here, I’m going to go for a run.”

Ryan didn’t bother to wait for Madej to leave for his own room before he shrugged off his jacket and started to pull off his tie and unbutton his shirt. Madej sent him a strange look, but bid him good night before he closed the door behind him. Ryan had to dig through his duffel for a long while before he unearthed his sweatpants and running hoodie, and he put them on quickly. His entire body felt like it was vibrating with strung-up energy, and Ryan hoped the run would help him clear his head.

* * *

The next morning, however, found Ryan just as jittery as the night before. It felt like everyone in the town was eyeing them distrustfully as they got their breakfast, bringing paper cups of coffee with them to the local psychiatric hospital. There they were going to talk to the doctor who had treated John Blaney, in whose coffin they’d found the as-yet unidentified body.

“Yes, I treated John Blaney,” the doctor said, as they followed him through the hallway. Ryan felt like they were obtrusive in this sterile environment in their dark jackets and shoes, shadowing a doctor like menacing goons. Madej especially, towering a head above everyone else as he did.

“He suffered from clinical schizophrenia, couldn’t distinguish reality from delusions, in addition to some kind of post-traumatic stress,” the doctor went on, and Madej made an interested noise.

“Have you seen that kind of thing before?” Ryan asked, pen and notepad at the ready as they trailed after him through a doorway. The doctor sighed and nodded.

“I’ve treated similar cases, yes,” he said.

“Were any of them Blaney’s classmates?” Madej asked.

The question struck Ryan as odd before he realized he hadn’t had the presence of mind to pay attention to the birth dates on the autopsies of the bodies found. He cursed inwardly, and the doctor nodded again.

“Are you treating any of them right now?” Madej continued, and the doctor stopped to turn to them.

“Yes” he said, frowning at them both. “Two of them, Greg and Stacy. They’ve been live-in patients for almost four years now.”

Ryan looked at Madej who looked at him, and the exchange felt weighted even though neither of them said anything.

“Can we talk to them?” Ryan asked, and the doctor looked a little apologetic.

“Certainly,” he said. “But it might not be of much use. They were in a car accident, you see, and Greg is in what we call a waking coma.”

“What about Stacy?” Ryan asked as the doctor opened a door.

“Why don’t you ask her,” he said and showed them inside.

Greg was laid out in a bed with hospital white sheets. Stacy was sitting in a wheelchair beside him, reading out loud from a book. Ryan exchanged another look with Madej, and it was something of a comfort that he wasn’t alone in feeling a little out of his depth. Ryan watched Madej walk over to them and kneel beside Stacy to introduce himself.

“Do you like to read to Greg?” he asked then, his voice uncharacteristically soft. Ryan found himself recalibrating some of his assumptions about Madej as he watched him.

“He likes it when I read to him,” Stacy said, without looking at Madej, before continuing to read from the book. Ryan swallowed when Madej glanced at him.

“Can we do a cursory medical exam on Stacy, doctor?” Ryan asked.

That was the moment Stacy threw the book on the floor and started screaming. Ryan took a step towards her, instinctively, as Madej shot up and took a step backwards. Stacy fell to the floor in a heap of convulsing limbs and started to bleed from her nose, a shock of red on her pale face.

“Orderly!” the doctor called out to the hall, but after exchanging another look, Ryan and Madej moved closer to Stacy, to hold her so she wouldn’t hurt herself while thrashing around. Ryan found he could use his body weight to keep her legs pinned, and while Madej placed his hands on her arms to keep her still, Ryan had to satisfy his curiosity. He hitched up her loose shirt a scant inch. There, just above the hem of her pants, were two bumps. They were identical to the ones on the body that had brought them to this town.

Ryan looked up and met Madej’s gaze. He was sure Madej’s look of shock was mirrored on his own face, and for the first time Ryan noticed that his eyes were brown.

* * *

They exited the facility, ushered on by a frazzled doctor and, to Ryan’s frustration, none the wiser.

“What the hell are those bumps?” Ryan demanded, but Madej could only shrug. He opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, but he was interrupted by a young woman coming up to them - it took Ryan a second to place her, but then he recalled the cemetery. It was the medical examiner’s daughter.

“Miss Sutcliffe,” Ryan said, trying his best to smile disarmingly and keep his body language open, so as to not intimidate her.

“Please, call me Diane,” she said and did something that might have been a curtsy, or might just have been a nervous jerk. She was thin, with hair so blonde it was almost white, and Ryan got a bad feeling from how she kept glancing over her shoulder.

“We were out in the forest,” she said and didn’t quite manage to meet their eyes. “Our entire class after  graduation day. We saw a bright light, and then... and then they started disappearing, one by one.”

Ryan started to grope for his notepad when he felt Madej’s hand on his arm. He looked up to see a trickle of blood from Diane’s left nostril, but before either of them could say anything, a familiar car pulled up in a screech of rubber against asphalt, and Diane’s father got out of it.

“Come on, we need to go,” he said and took his daughter by the arm. “You’re not well, Diane.”

“No, I’m fine dad!” Diane protested and wiped her upper lip even while her father opened the car door and pushed her inside.

“Now wait just a minute,” Madej said, but Sutcliffe only glared at him and slammed the door closed after sitting down behind the wheel. He tore away with squealing tires, leaving Ryan and Madej standing in the parking lot.

“I get the feeling these townspeople don’t like us a whole lot,” Madej said conversationally. Ryan snorted and crossed his arms.

“Well, you know my theory,” he said. “What do you say about us checking out that forest?”

“Sounds good to me,” Madej said with another shrug and a smile. Ryan could swear he saw a spark of excitement in his brown eyes, and he felt a corresponding tug in his own stomach.


	2. Episode 1, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens.

The forest darkened fast in the falling dusk and Ryan felt a creeping sense of foreboding as they made their way in among the trees. He always did feel a little bit braver though, when he got to tug on the dark navy blue jacket with FBI emblazoned on the back in huge, blocky, yellow letters. Madej’s FBI jacket was a little short in the sleeves, Ryan noted as they trekked deeper into the forest side by side, Ryan with the map at the ready and Madej with the compass. There was a good two inches of pale wrist visible when Madej held up his palm to look at the compass in question.

“Get a load of this, Bergara!” he said so suddenly that Ryan almost tripped over a root.

“What?” Ryan said and pointed his flashlight on Madej when he lowered his hand to show him the compass. The compass needle was revolving at such a speed that the reflected beam of light exploded on the inside of Ryan’s eyelids when he blinked.

“What the hell,” Ryan said slowly. There was a loud crack behind them, and if Ryan was honest with himself, he’d admit that he jumped at the sound. They both turned around, shining their twin flashlight beams at the approaching figure. The light bounced of a sheriff’s badge in the man’s belt, and the hat all but confirmed his identity, but the more pressing matter was the gun the man had pointed at them.

None other than local county sheriff Ben Henderson, Ryan would bet. His name had popped up in the reports.

“FBI agents Bergara and Madej,” Madej said, raising his hands cautiously while holding on to his flashlight.

“You could be the Queen of Sheba for all I care,” the man said, holding the gun completely steady. “This is private property, so I’m gonna have to ask you to leave or I’ll have you arrested.”

Ryan looked at Madej, who met his eyes and pursed his lips as if to say _can’t argue with a gun._ It rankled, but Ryan could see that this was a fight they couldn’t win so with that, they started to backtrack through the forest, back to their car.

“Let’s pay sheriff Henderson a visit in the morning, Agent Bergara” Madej said as he buckled in and Ryan turned the wheel to get back out on the state road. “I mean, I’m getting definite cult vibes off this entire situation.”

Ryan hummed an assent, but it was absent-minded. He had his eyes on the road, and his mind fixated on the mystery at hand, and that was why the light took him by surprise. It wasn’t a flash - it was a glow steadily growing in brightness, so that when Ryan pulled to a stop, Madej’s face was awash in it; Ryan could see every one of his features as clearly as if it was day.

Both of them rushed out of the car, despite the almost deafening roar that seemed to accompany the light. But as soon as Ryan got out, the light disappeared together with the noise, leaving a ringing silence and a darkness so dense Ryan had to blink several times before he could discern shapes again.

“What the hell,” Madej said.

“What?” Ryan asked, looking at him over the roof of the car. Madej was looking at his watch, wide-eyed.

“I swear I looked at the time just before the light,” he said. “It showed nine oh three, and now it’s nine thirteen.”

“People who say they've seen or been abducted by UFOs,” Ryan said. “They have reported unexplained loss of time.”

Madej’s eyes met his over the car.

“Time is a universal invariant,” he said, and he sounded upset. “You say as much in your senior thesis, Bergara!”

“Not here I guess,” Ryan said, and with that he started to run back up the road. He heard Madej shout after him, but he didn’t stop, until he suddenly did. Rain started to fall, the drizzle soon thickening into a veritable downpour. Madej came jogging up behind him, a little out of breath. Ryan willed the rush of blood in his ears to recede.

“What the hell,” Madej said again when he looked at the asphalt by Ryan’s feet, where yesterday Ryan had painted a huge X.

“The forest controls these kids and summons them there,” Ryan said, hating how out of breath he sounded. “And the bumps have to be from some kind of test that's being done on them. It may be causing some kind of genetic mutation which would explain the body that we dug up.”

Madej stared at him through the rain. “That’s certainly a working theory,” he said, and Ryan couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing in the middle of the state road in Oregon, next to a possible UFO site in the middle of the night with his partner looking at him like he was insane.

* * *

“How the hell do I write about missing time in an official FBI report,” Ryan muttered to himself after they’d said goodnight to each other and retreated to their respective motel rooms. He was bent over his notebook, tapping his pen against it impatiently. He felt itchy all over, with the sweat from the hike having dried during the car ride back while the rain had soaked the collar of his shirt, and it was with a sigh of relief that he gave up. He started to strip and went into the bathroom to tap himself a bath.

He stood, still in his underwear, balancing one foot on the side of the tub as he waited for it to fill up, and rubbed his neck with a groan. Their trip up and the subsequent night in an uncomfortable bed was starting to take its toll on him. He put his hands to the low of his own back to arch his spine, and that was when he felt it. Two small bumps, right beside his spine and just above the lining of his boxers.

Not even bothering with pants, Ryan shot out of the bathroom and fumbled with the outer door, hands shaking. He knocked on Madej’s door with enough urgency that it opened quickly, and he pushed inside without an explanation. Madej closed the door behind him, the question evident in the way he raised his eyebrows at him. Ryan supposed he was a sight to behold, near naked, shivering and pale as a sheet. He had no time to be self-conscious. Ryan swallowed and realized he couldn’t look his colleague in the eye when he asked, “Could you look at something for me?”

“I, uh, sure,” he heard Madej say, and there was an odd, frail note to his voice that Ryan was too worked up to analyze. He twisted to the side and  hunched his shoulders, placing the back of his hand against his spine to indicate the place.

Ryan inhaled and held his breath when he felt the feather light touch of Madej’s fingers against the small of his back. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, this time definitely at his proximity to another body.

“It’s just mosquito bites.”

The breath left his lungs in a shaky rush and without any input from his conscious mind he pulled Madej in for a hug. He planted his face square in Madej’s chest, not even caring that his breaths had to be uncomfortably damp against the shirt. He felt Madej’s hands come up and land, tentative, on his back. He heard Madej laugh softly from somewhere above him before he said: “I felt like I was eaten alive out there, you got off easy.”

Ryan felt a corresponding laughter start somewhere in the pit of his stomach. He hiccuped against Madej and then leaned back. They let go of each other quickly, and when they looked at each other Ryan knew they were never going to mention this again.

“I’m sorry,” Ryan said and rubbed at his neck. “I guess my imagination tends to run away with me sometimes.”

“No, hey,” Madej said and crossed his arms. “This case gives me the heebie jeebies too.”

Ryan laughed again, easier this time. “The heebie jeebies?” he repeated and he saw that Madej’s eyes were crinkled in a grin. “Really, Madej?”

“We were almost abducted by aliens, Bergara. I think you can call me Shane at this point!” he said and threw out his hands in a wide gesture.

“I thought you said you didn’t believe in aliens,” Ryan said. He felt buoyant, after having his fear dispelled, and he could see that Madej - Shane - was gearing up to give a scathing reply when the phone rang. The piercing tone made them both jump, and it was obvious Shane wasn’t expecting a call. He walked over to the dresser beside the bed and picked up the phone anyway. Ryan watched him intently as he took the call. The laughter had disappeared from his eyes and he was somber and serious as he listened, only giving clipped, monosyllabic answers or prompts. Ryan’s stomach sank steadily, and when Shane finally put the phone down and met his eyes, he was expecting the worst.

“They found Stacy by the woods,” Shane said. “She’s dead.”

* * *

“What do you mean, we can’t see the body?”

Ryan stood a little to the side while Shane was yelling at the obstinate sheriff, who was tag teaming with the medical examiner and standing guard by the yellow tape perimeter. Ryan’s eyes felt like they were full of sand and he longed for bed, but he still did his best to see what was happening. He could only see trees, and the silhouettes of people huddled around what he assumed was the body of Stacy. The truck was standing by the roadside - Ryan had talked to the shaken driver. She ran out right in front of him, he’d said. Nothing he could have done. She had been barefoot.

“We will come back with a warrant and get every crime scene photo you take, and if we find out that you’ve mishandled anything, the FBI will see that you never work again!” Shane’s voice cracked a little by the end. Ryan didn’t think anyone but he noticed. He put his hand on his arm. He seemed to be shaking with a quiet rage, and Ryan was unsure of how to handle it.

“Let’s go back,” he murmured, and he could tell Shane gave in by the way his shoulders sagged.

* * *

When they pulled up by the motel, the stench of smoke was already thick in Ryan’s nostrils.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Shane said and got out of the car as soon as it came to a halt. Ryan had to take a deep breath and tighten his grip on the steering wheel for a second before he could follow Shane outside. The motel was engulfed in flames, and even if the entire fire brigade was present to bring the fire under control, it seemed hopeless. The fire illuminated the night sky and was hot enough to warm Ryan’s face from several feet away.

“There go our X-rays,” Ryan commented, and Shane flashed him a look. The awning in front of the doors crashed to the ground in an explosion of splintering embers, and both Ryan and Shane took a step closer to each other.

“I want to check out the bodies of the other victims,” Shane said and Ryan nodded.

* * *

“Oh, _come_ on!” Shane yelled when they arrived at the cemetery, only to find the grave lots of the first two victims neatly dug up and empty. Ryan felt like bursting out in hysterical laughter.

“They _really_ don’t like us in this town,” he said and he heard Shane give a huff. He saw the breath turn into a cloud of condensation that quickly evaporated into the night air.

“Let’s go back to the forest,” Shane said at the same time as Ryan said:

“Fuck this.”

* * *

If possible, the forest seemed even thicker and darker than Ryan remembered. He kept close to Shane, and tried to tell himself it was because Shane plowed a way through the brambles that was easy to follow. They weren’t carrying flashlights this time.

“I don’t-” Ryan started, but was interrupted by a scream. It had to be close by, to be so loud in these dense woods, and both of them broke into a run.

Before long, they could see a light between the trees. Ryan made himself go faster, perhaps to outrun the wild beating of his heart. This lead them to run a few feet apart, but Ryan didn’t have time to be afraid of losing sight of Shane before he heard a whacking sound, and the shape of Shane disappeared from view so suddenly it was like he’d never been there at all. But that was when Ryan caught sight of Diane Sutcliffe, silhouetted by the light. She was screaming and fighting against the grip of none other than Greg, the supposedly brain-dead hospital patient, still wearing only his hospital garb.

Ryan stopped dead, but not for the blinding light. From the direction where Shane had disappeared from view appeared a man holding a gun - Sheriff Ben Henderson himself

“Get down on the ground!” the sheriff said, and Ryan raised his hands, slowly.

“You’ve known it was Greg all along,” Ryan said, fighting to get his breathing under control. He saw something flicker across the sheriff’s face in the dark, and he half-turned towards the light, where Greg had lifted Diane from the ground.

“Son, don’t!” the sheriff yelled, while still pointing his gun steadfastly at Ryan.

“Son?” Ryan repeated, and then: “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“Let her go, Greg!”

Against the mad thundering of his own heart, Ryan threw himself at the sheriff the moment his attention was diverted. There was a mad scramble for the gun, a test of strength - but Ryan had his survival instinct working for him. He had a hand on the sheriff’s throat and a knee in his stomach and by the sheer terror of it he managed to wrench the gun from the sheriff’s hands while they grappled in the dirt. When Ryan rolled upright, bracing a knee on the ground and pointing the gun at Greg, the light flashed blindingly bright in a thunderclap of sound, and everything went dark and quiet so suddenly that Ryan thought he’d lost consciousness for a fraction of a second.

On the forest floor, Greg and Diane lay side by side, both unconscious but clearly alive. While Ryan got to his feet, the sheriff rushed up to them and fell to his knees. Ryan was breathing unsteadily, and, deciding that the sheriff had the situation in hand, looked around for Shane.

He was lying on the ground a few paces away, and as Ryan crouched by him, he blinked his eyes open before immediately closing them in a frown. He then put his hand to his forehead and tried to sit up.

“What happened?” he said as Ryan grabbed his shoulders to help him stay upright.

“I think you were hit over the head by the sheriff,” Ryan said, squinting at him to try and see if he was seriously hurt. It was hard to tell in the dark of the night, and Shane opened his eyes again to look at him.

“Yeah, no, I got _that,”_ he said, and Ryan gave a breathless wheeze of a laugh at his annoyed voice. “I meant, is everyone okay?”

Ryan turned his head, and saw the sheriff lifting up Diane Sutcliffe in his arms.

“I think everyone will be,” Ryan said, and squeezed Shane’s shoulder to reassure him, but mostly to reassure himself.

* * *

The bruise on Shane’s forehead had paled into a mottled yellow by the time they had finished their report on the strange case of Greg Henderson and the abduction and death of his classmates. Ryan had settled into the cramped little basement office, and Shane had even half-heartedly helped him clear the other desk of debris so he could set up station.

Now Ryan leaned back in his desk chair with an exaggerated groan. Shane looked up from his own desk, his glasses sliding further down his nose as he looked at Ryan.

“I’m done,” Ryan said. “I’m not saying it was alien abduction, I’m just saying I don’t have a good rational explanation of the facts. Let’s hope the interview with Henderson junior gives us something.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Shane said and pushed the glasses back up with his middle finger. “Look, just hand your report over and I can give it a read through before I hand it in. You should go home.”

“Really?” Ryan said and felt an immediate and all-encompassing warmth for Shane for letting him go home to a hot bath and a night in front of the television.

“Yeah, come on,” Shane said, smiling and gesturing towards him to throw the folder over. Ryan got up and walked over with an exaggerated groan, lamenting the effort. He smacked the stack of papers down on Shane’s desk so that some sticky notes fluttered up in the air.

“Here you go,” Ryan said and turned on his heel. “See you Monday!”

“Hey,” Shane said, when Ryan was already reaching for the door. He turned and quirked his eyebrows in an unspoken question. Shane was just looking at him through his glasses, big and rimless lenses that made his eyes just a fraction bigger. He was still smiling, a small upturning at the corner of his mouth.

“You did good, little guy,” he said, and Ryan laughed.

“Fuck you,” he said, good-naturedly, and Shane threw his head back to laugh as well. Ryan left FBI headquarters with a warm, content feeling deep in his bones.

* * *

He’d settled into his couch after dinner with every intention of dozing off in front of the TV when his phone rang. The shrill tone dispelled some of Ryan’s contentment, and he reached for it with a sigh.

“Bergara,” he said into the receiver, pressing the phone to his ear with a grip that was a little precarious.

“Ryan?” Shane’s voice said on the other end.

“Yeah,” Ryan said, settling back and using his shoulder to keep the phone pressed against his ear. “What’s up?”

“I sent in the report,” Shane said. There was an edge to his voice that made Ryan frown.

“Was there something wrong with it?” he asked and curled a fist in his lap.

“No, it was fine,” Shane said, the line crackling as he sighed. “I called in to ask about Greg Henderson.”

“And?” Ryan said, crossing his legs and shifting to grip the phone again.

“They say they’ve never heard of him.”

Ryan blinked. “That’s impossible.”

“Well, that’s what I said. They said, check the records, and sure enough.”

“There are no records of him anymore,” Ryan said, and it was like the air had been sucked out of the room. Shane’s silence was all the answer he needed.

“You’ll have to admit that it’s strange, if not aliens,” Ryan said at last. The line crackled again, and Ryan hoped it was Shane snorting.

“Strange is a good word for it,” he said. “See you Monday though?”

“Absolutely,” Ryan said, and was surprised to discover he didn’t feel afraid.


	3. Episode 2, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shitty, shitty things happen.

The strange thing about life was that it went on. There might have been a huge cover up of several unsolved murders in _Bumfuck, OR,_ but there was other work to be done and Ryan rolled up his sleeves and kept doing his job.

It was all he had, really.

Shane Madej was a maddening colleague, often coming in late and always talking about completely irrelevant things - _did you know honey has been used to heal wounds for millennia? A human can outrun a horse on a short distance. Look at_ this _\- a tree that has grown up through the bullet hole in a WWI helmet!_

Sometimes, Shane even called Ryan at home to tell him about something he’d read in the paper, or just to speculate on what gaffe Bill Clinton would commit next. After a while, Ryan found he didn’t even mind having his evening interrupted like this, even when they spent their entire workday in each other’s company.

One day Shane had traipsed in, late as usual, and handed Ryan a rolled-up poster. Ryan had shot him a sceptical look and unfurled the paper, revealing an enlarged image of a flying saucer, and below it stenciled I WANT TO BELIEVE. Ryan had burst out laughing and Shane winked at him, saying, “Had to give you something, didn’t I? Since you can’t prove shit.”

Ryan had said, “Shut up, Shane,” and taped the poster to the wall behind his desk, so that Shane had to see it every time he looked up. That was the kind of colleague Shane Madej was.

But there was no denying he got the work done. He folded himself down by his desk and went through cases, file by file, and checked them against new developments within branches of the FBI while keeping tabs on ongoing investigations. In a way it was inspiring, Ryan thought. Shane’s single-mindedness to find the logical solutions to the strangest of cases made Ryan feel like maybe they could make a difference in the long run. Then again, there were days when Shane smacked down a file on Ryan’s desk that made his stomach turn and his faith in humanity crumble.

“His _liver_ was removed,” Ryan repeated, staring down at the papers spread out on his desk.

“Yup,” Shane said, obnoxiously popping the _p._ Ryan grimaced and pulled at the paper containing the details of the case.

“This is the third victim,” Ryan read, fumbling for his glasses as he squinted at the page. “Strangled to death. Liver missing, the removal was not surgical.”

“Yeah, what the fuck,” Shane interjected. “How does that work? You just rip it out with your bare hands?”

“You know, actually, I think this sounds familiar somehow,” Ryan said, frowning.

“You’ve heard about someone having their liver ripped out with bare hands?” Shane said. He sat down on the edge of Ryan’s desk, stooping over the file, and there could have been something mocking in his tone, but Ryan was pretty sure Shane was actually asking.

“Yeah,” Ryan said slowly and stood up. “Or no, I don’t know about the bare hands, but.”

He went over to the cabinets and trailed his fingers over the faded etiquettes while he wracked his brain for the name or date of the case.

“A-ha!” he called when he’d rifled through several folders and pulled the right one out triumphantly, holding it in the air like a trophy. “This is from back in 1963,” Ryan said, bringing the folder back down to look at it, flipping it open. “Likely a connection to similar cases in 1933 and 1903. All times there were five unrelated victims, all with their livers removed and no leads.”

Shane gave a low whistle.“That's one hell of a copycat killer, then. Who'd dig out a ninety year old murder and think, _livers, hell yeah?”_

Ryan scratched his nose. “What if it’s the same,” he said, slowly. Shane quirked his eyebrows.

“Person? The same person who murdered someone in 1903 goes out and kills someone in 1993?”

“I’m not saying person, exactly,” Ryan said. Shane stared at him for a second and then his face stretched into a grin.

“You’re saying what, then? That some kind of immortal monster with a taste for human foie gras once every thirty years?”

“It’s a theory,” Ryan said, trying his damndest to not sound defensive. “You said it yourself that it’s unlikely to be a copycat killer, since the original murders aren’t very well known.”

Shane shook his head. “It’s a theory, I’ll give you that,” he said and cocked his head to the side. “But let’s go get some more facts before we write it in stone.”

That was as much Ryan was ever going to get, so he shrugged and took it.

* * *

Crime scenes often made Ryan uncomfortable, especially the violent ones. He’d confided in Shane once, and Shane had given him an odd look before he laughed and told him he was in the wrong profession. Ryan had hit him on the arm and told him to shut up.

There was a chalk outline dutifully scrawled on the floor, among the blood spatters. Ryan didn’t retch but he did feel queasy while Shane squatted to inspect the remains, apparently completely unbothered.

“The last two times there were five victims, I think it’s reasonable to assume there will be two more this time,” Ryan said and crossed his arms.

“I agree,” Shane said, and Ryan had a rebuttal ready before his words registered.

“Wait, you _agree_ with me?” Ryan said, unable to keep the glee from his voice. Shane looked up at him with a scoff, his face distorted into a grimace that made Ryan laugh.

“Don’t let it get to your head,” he said and got up, his knees giving a cracking noise so loud that even Ryan could hear it. “This is clearly the work of a serial killer who likes to gloat. I think he might even return to the scene of the crime.”

“If he doesn’t find another victim, he might be back to try recreate or experience again the euphoria he felt,” Ryan said slowly. A shiver of disgust went up his spine just from imagining the inner life of someone so reprehensible; Ryan didn’t like how good he was at it sometimes.

“So you’re saying this is the work of a regular human male, after all?” Shane said and elbowed Ryan in the side, grinning broadly. Ryan rolled his eyes, but couldn’t help but smile back.

“Not a regular human - a psychopath. What I’m saying is maybe we stick around,” he replied and looked around in the dank hallway that led to a parking garage. “Set up something at the other murder sites as well.”

“I wish the egotistical serial killers would commit their murders somewhere nice, just once,” Shane sighed and put his hands on his hips. Ryan laughed and shook his head.

“I’ll see what I can do about surveillance.”

* * *

Ryan believed many things but he wasn’t sure if he believed Shane’s profiling that has the killer returning. It was a plausible theory, but it felt a little too easy. His doubts were put to shame, however, when the very next night, the surveillance footage showed a man in a dark jacket walking straight through the parking garage, and into the stairwell where the hallway was. There was no hesitation at all on his part, and Ryan whacked Shane on the arm to wake him, since he’d fallen asleep in his chair with his neck bent at an uncomfortable angle.

“What?” he said, jolting awake with that exaggerated alertness that fooled no one. Ryan gestured to the screen.

“A maintenance worker,” Ryan said. “That could be the reason he was able to get access undetected.”

“Let’s go get him,” Shane said, and for someone that tall and gangly, he could move really fast. Ryan had to jog to keep up with him, and together they approached the man in the dark jacket, just as he was exiting the parking garage.

“FBI,” Ryan said and held up his badge. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Ryan was ready for him to bolt, or for him to hedge and ask them what they thought he’d done; he even tensed in anticipation of having to chase after him. But the man only looked at them, nodded and smiled. Highly suspicious, if Ryan was any judge. He didn’t look at Shane to confirm that he shared his suspicions, but the way Shane moved in to crowd the man just a little made Ryan feel vindicated.

“If you would just come with us,” Ryan said, doing his best to sound amicable even as his smile twisted into a grimace.

* * *

They took the man, Andrew Denvers, in for questioning. Shane made a convincing enough case - that the killer most likely was male, twenty-five to thirty-five years of age, with above average intelligence and working as maintenance personnel, all of which suited Denvers - that they had him take a polygraph test. Both Shane and Ryan watched the test through the two-way mirror into the interrogation room. Ryan had his arms crossed and Shane was hunched over with his hands in his pockets but listening just as intently as Ryan.

“He seems to be passing with flying colors,” Shane murmured.

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Because he’s a psychopath. Possibly an immortal one.”

He and Shane exchanged looks, and both of them tried to hide their smiles.

“The liver symbolizes regeneration, cleansing,” Ryan said then, sobering up and returning his gaze to the interrogation room. “I’m not saying it has granted him eternal life, but I think he might think he needs livers to stay alive.”

“Ugh, what a weirdo,” Shane muttered, and Ryan had to clamp a hand over his mouth so he wouldn’t laugh out loud.

* * *

When the polygraph test reached its conclusion, they had to let Denvers go because they had no reasonable grounds to keep him detained yet. Ryan wasn’t discouraged, however, because they had his name and address. Shane was likewise optimistic, until Steven Lim came marching up to them, armed with an impressive folder and a stormy frown on his face. Ryan and Steven went way back, and Ryan braced himself a little.

“What are you doing, trying to take over my case?” Lim said, pointing the folder at Shane’s chest. Shane lifted his hands, and he wore that nonplussed, wholly harmless expression that drove Ryan nuts when he adopted it during an argument.

“You were the one to bring it to me, Lim,” Shane said, and a vein on Lim’s forehead bulged. There had been a constant rivalry between Ryan and Steven ever since the academy, always bordering on but never quite crossing over to hostility. Ryan wasn’t proud that Steven’s frustration made him feel a little bit of _schadenfreude_ right in this moment, and he crossed his arms in an attempt to contain it.

“Yeah, because you’re a good profiler!” Lim said and smacked the folder against Shane’s chest. Shane raised his eyebrows and Ryan would have laughed if the next words out of Lim’s mouth hadn’t been: “But then you go and get _Spooky_ Bergara on it, going on his wild goose chases and trying to pull the case from me!”

Ryan had known they called him that behind his back, he really had. But having it spat in his face like this - his fingers curled into fists. Open hostility it was. “If you were able to do your job then we wouldn’t have to come in and hold your hand,” Ryan said, and was himself almost taken aback by the venomous tone of his voice. Shane certainly was, judging by the way he actually took a step back,lifting his hand to hover a scant inch from Ryan’s arm. Ryan ignored it.

“I _am_ doing my job!” Lim protested, his annoyingly handsome face scrunched up in anger. “You’re getting in the way. I’m asking you to get out of it.”

With that, he stormed off with his tie fluttering out behind him, leaving his colleagues behind, bewildered and speechless.The silence was heavy, but it was eventually broken by Shane, who was wearing a humorous and gently deriding expression that Ryan grew to hate immediately. “Spooky Bergara?”

“Don’t start,” Ryan said tiredly, and for once he actually meant it. Shane pulled his lower lip in between his teeth and looked at Ryan like he was debating the pros and cons of needling him about it. Ryan felt his own shoulders tense up in anticipation, but in the end Shane shrugged and said:

“We’re not going to get out of his way, are we?”

“No,” Ryan replied decisively.

* * *

They took up station outside of Andrew Denvers listed residence inside Ryan’s car. A good old-fashioned stakeout, with all the takeout sandwiches and quick bathroom breaks that it entailed. Ryan had done his fair share of them during his time at the Bureau. He just had never done them with Shane.

Shane Madej was a tall person. So tall, in fact, that he made Ryan, a man of middling but completely normal height, look like a child. This meant that there was no position whatsoever that he could maintain in a car for longer than fifteen seconds before he had to shift, and when the sound of rustling clothes scraped across Ryan’s eardrums for the umpteenth time, he felt about ready to put his own head through the windshield. Ryan threw his head back against the headrest instead and closed his eyes. “Please tell me there’s something happening in that house that could give us probable cause to rush over.”

He heard Shane shift once again, and a damp, squeaking noise that had to be him slapping his palm against the window. “You know, it looks awfully quiet over there, Agent Bergara.”

Ryan groaned, loudly and unreservedly. He only opened his eyes when he felt Shane’s hand on the crook of his elbow. He looked over at Shane, who had fixed him with an intent gaze and a playful smile, and for a disorienting moment, Ryan felt his stomach swoop. Then he realized his meaning.

“You think he isn’t home,” Ryan stated.

“I hope you realize we’re breaking at least five different rules and some three laws by doing this,” he continued as he followed Shane across the street.

“Uh-huh,” Shane said and tried the door. It was, of course, locked, and Ryan rolled his eyes before he pushed Shane aside to pick the lock.

As he worked, he felt Shane put his hands in his pockets and casually shift his weight from foot to foot where he stood behind him on the porch, hopefully keeping watch. “We might not be doing the right thing, technically,” he was saying. “We might be violating a person’s right to privacy by doing this. But we might also just make certain we’re on the track of a serial killer.”

“So it’s fine,” Ryan summed up as the lock clicked open, finally allowing him to turn the handle. "The ends justify, etcetera."

The door creaked like it hadn’t been in use for quite some time. “Hello!” Ryan called, because if Denvers was home, they could still play this off as an official visit. But there was no answer, and the house was dark, so both of them proceeded to enter. Ryan carefully put away his lock-picking kit in his jacket pocket and produced a flashlight instead. Guided by that lone beam of light, they moved further inside, inspecting a house that was suspiciously devoid of personality.

“This guy lives like a greyfriar,” Shane said, when Ryan let the flashlight sweep over an empty kitchen counter.

“Like a what now?” Ryan asked and kneeled by a bureau that seemed pretty old and a little out of place in this sparsely decorated home.

“An order of monks that live extremely frugally,” Shane said and leaned down to look over Ryan’s shoulder as Ryan started rifling through the drawers starting from the bottom. He was just about to call Shane a huge nerd when he pulled out a set of yellowing newspaper clippings and the words died in his throat. “Well, damn,” Shane whispered. Ryan just swallowed.

They were old articles on the unsolved liver murders in 1933 and 1963. They seemed well-thumbed through, the ink fading on the one from 1933, and Ryan carefully placed them back in the drawer and shut it. He looked up, and Shane’s eyes were dark in the unlit room, but Ryan knew that they shared the feeling of apprehension that was thick in the air.

“We need to go get a warrant,” Ryan said.

Shane didn’t so much agree as he did straighten up and give a loud sigh in compliance.


	4. Episode 2, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryan's origin story, in more ways than one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want the record to state that I actually love Steven Lim, despite my treatment of him in this fic.

“Hey, let’s go grab lunch,” Shane said the following day. “My treat.”

And Ryan should have smelled something fishy right there. But he had steadfastly ignored the pangs of hunger for more than an hour already because he wanted to finish the warrant application before lunch, and Ryan was only a man, after all.

“Sure! How’s Mexican sound?” he said, and it was the beginning of the end, really. He was halfway through his burrito, tie neatly tucked in his shirt pocket and napkin neatly tucked into his shirt collar, when Shane said:

“So. Spooky Bergara?”

Ryan didn’t choke on the habanero, but it was a near thing. He was sufficiently intelligent to realize that not only had Shane effectively bribed him, but also trapped him in the social mores of eating in company, thus making it impossible for Ryan to just get up and walk away. So Ryan swallowed, set the burrito down on his plate and said, “I know I must sound crazy when I talk about monster people and ghosts, but I know what I’ve seen.”

Shane, for once in his life, said nothing. He only looked at Ryan, his eyebrows gently arched as if to urge Ryan to continue. If Ryan squinted, he could even pretend there wasn’t any mockery to his expression.

“One of my first field cases was what seemed to be a hunting accident on the edge of a reservation,” Ryan said, and he felt a shiver down his spine just remembering the overcast day they’d made it down there, Zack Evans and he, how the trees had done nothing to stop the icy wind from finding its way under the upturned collar of his jacket. Shane still didn’t say anything. He was picking at his nachos but he wasn’t eating. He was just looking at Ryan so intently he felt acutely self-conscious.

“There had been a land dispute between the parties,” Ryan resumed the story. “The suspect vehemently claimed he thought it was a wild animal - and sure enough, his son had been scratched, showed us the marks and everything - but it was his neighbor lying on the outskirts of his field, dead by gunshot.”

He sighed again and poked at his half-eaten burrito, but he’d lost all appetite now. “It was such short range, too. You’d have to be blind to mistake someone for an animal at that distance, no matter how dark it was.”

“So it was a land dispute,” Shane said, and Ryan shot him a look.

“Let me tell the story,” he said irritably. Shane mimed zipping shut his lips and leaned back to throw his hands in the air, exasperated. “The ground was all muddy from rain and there were noticeable tracks - of course the site was trampled to hell, but a set of animal tracks did lead to it,” Ryan said and leaned back as well.

“To it, not from,” he hurried to add when Shane looked like he wanted to interrupt. “We backtracked into the woods, and we eventually found some human footprints. It looked like the same trail of tracks though.” Ryan could see how much Shane was fighting to keep quiet. His lips were pressed tight, and a vein was clearly visible on his forehead. Any other time, Ryan would have found this highly amusing.

“I know it sounds nuts,” he said, wincing at himself. How many times had he said that to other people and been met with agreement? “But not far from the trail we found a considerable amount of human skin.”

“Human _skin?”_ Shane said, and the note of horrified surprise, at least, was a little gratifying.

“Yeah,” Ryan said and pushed the burrito away. Human skin in a pile under a fir tree, just layers and layers of it, like the sheddings of a snake, a sickly, glistening color. There hadn’t been enough blood for it to make sense. “We ordered an autopsy of the victim,” Ryan continued after a short pause. “He wasn’t missing any skin, but his canine teeth were elongated and, here’s the kicker, he had old scars from an animal attack that very much resembled the ones the suspect’s son had.”

“So, what’s the theory? Werewolves?” Shane said and crossed his arms. Ryan put his hand on the table and closed his fist.

“I never said werewolf,” he said, fighting not to clench his jaw. “No one ever said werewolf. I told Evans - my case partner - that this seemed like something not entirely human. He said I was crazy, and voilá - Spooky Bergara was born.”

Ryan let out a short little bark of laughter - it sounded terribly insincere, even to his own ears. “Your friend Steven Lim had a field day when Evans told him. He’d been so jealous when he was passed up on the case, and there I was, fucking it up with outlandish theories that made me a fool in the eyes of the Bureau.”

“Did you solve the case, then?” Shane asked, and Ryan gritted his teeth.

“What was there to solve? The case went to trial, they couldn’t prove beyond reasonable doubt that it had been murder. He was sentenced for accidental manslaughter, I think.”

Shane uncrossed his arms to rub his jaw, thoughtfully. “So you think this could be something similar? Just - a werewolf that likes livers, or something.”

“Fuck, I don’t know,” Ryan said. “But is it crazy to consider it? Is it so weird to believe there could be stuff like that out there?”

A small crease appeared between Shane’s eyebrows. His features were so marked and expressive, and yet Ryan had a difficulty reading them right then. “Believing is easy, Ryan. I just- I need proof,” he said.

“You think believing is easy?” The words slipped out of Ryan before he could even hesitate. He quickly bit his lip, to keep more words from spilling out. Shane only looked at him, mouth slightly open, and Ryan sighed yet again and rubbed his forehead with his thumb. “I just- I don’t _want_ to believe in monsters. Do you think it makes me happy, thinking about all the weird shit that go bump in the night, huh?”

“You do seem to seek out ghosts with cheerful abandon,” Shane pointed out, and there was a little glimmer of humour in his eyes that didn’t feel accusatory.

“I guess I do,” Ryan said. “But at least ghosts don’t rip out livers.”

“I’ll give you that,” Shane said. “Hey, look, are you finishing that burrito, or?”

“Knock yourself out,” Ryan said and pushed the plate across the table. Say what you will about Shane Madej, the man was a beast when it came to putting away food.

True to his word, Shane paid for the food, and at least Ryan wasn’t hungry anymore when they made it out of the Mexican hole-in-the-wall establishment. He did feel a simmering in his gut - not quite resentment, not quite rage, but somewhere in between, and when Shane grabbed his arm he came close to hissing out a warning not to touch him. But Ryan followed Shane’s careful shoulder shrug indication, and saw none other than Andrew Denvers among the pedestrians on the sidewalk, just as the man seemed to spot the both of them in turn.

“Agents!” he greeted them jovially, smiling brightly. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Don’t try anything, Denvers,” Ryan said and put his hands flat against his own pants pockets to keep from making fists. “We’ve got our eyes on you.”

Shane hadn’t removed his hand from Ryan’s arm, and he gave an insistent tug. Ryan snapped his mouth shut and glared. Denvers only tipped his cap at them, still smiling, and Ryan was glad for Shane’s hand on his arm that kept him from looking back when they had passed each other.

* * *

It was a surprise to both of them, to be called into the Director’s office as soon as they arrived back at the Hoover building. Ryan exchanged a puzzled glance with Shane before they both stepped inside, coming face to face with Director Bennett seated behind his mahogany desk, fingers sternly steepled in front of him.

“Agent Lim tells me you’ve been working on a case under his jurisdiction,” Bennett said, his pleasant monotone somewhat tinged with disappointment.

“He asked us for help, sir,” Shane offered, and Ryan hesitated a beat before nodding.

“Well, he’s also asked you to stop,” Bennett said, with a note of finality to his voice. Ryan squared his shoulders and said:

“Sir, we have strong grounds to believe we need to keep Denvers under surveillance.”

“What are these grounds?” Bennett asked point blank. Ryan and Shane exchanged looks again, and Shane did a sort of apologetic half-shrug.

“Call it a hunch,” Ryan said, but Bennett only quirked his eyebrow.

“You need to do better than that, agents,” he said. “Stay away from this case, and especially Andrew Denvers, or I’m going to have to have you suspended.”

Ryan drew in a breath to protest, but Shane put his hand on his elbow again. He felt the fight leak out of him like the air from a punctured balloon. “Yes, sir,” he muttered, resenting how Bennet nodded and dismissed them instantly by returning his attention to the paperwork on his desk.

“What the hell,” Ryan hissed at Shane when they had passed Bennett’s intimidating secretary and were out in the hallway. “Are we just going to let this thing go?”

Shane gripped Ryan by his shoulders, turning so that they were face to face. Ryan had to crane his neck to be able to look him in the eyes at this distance, and he saw that Shane’s mouth was pressed into an uncharacteristically serious line. “Ryan,” he said. “We can’t solve anything or catch anyone if we’re suspended, okay?”

“Yeah I know!” Ryan said and shrugged off Shane’s hands as he looked to the side. “But I don’t like giving up like that.”

“Think of it as a tactical retreat, buddy,” Shane said, and when Ryan glanced back at him, he saw that Shane had put his hands back in his pockets and that his mouth was pulled into something that could pass for a smile, even though he didn’t look Ryan in the eye at all.

* * *

The anger was left smoldering in the pit of Ryan’s stomach through the rest of the day, even if it was mitigated by that small voice in the back of his head that said “Make nice with your superiors, Bergara.” He hadn’t made it this far to shit where he ate, and after several calming breaths, he had to concede that Shane had probably been right about backing off. He still slammed the door shut behind him and threw his keys in the bowl on the dresser when he got home. Without prompting, his mother’s words echoed dully in the back of his head _\- never go to bed angry and never put your keys directly on the table._

“Thanks, ma,” he muttered out loud and kicked off his shoes to walk into the kitchen, to see if he was up for making dinner, or if he had any leftovers.

He puttered around the kitchen, watering his severely neglected succulents by the windowsill and half-heartedly eating pieces off his unheated leftover Chinese takeout from a few days ago. Something was itching at the back of his mind while he loosened his tie and started to button down his shirt, but he didn’t figure it out until he slumped down in his couch.

After that first phone call, when Shane had told him Greg Henderson didn’t exist anymore, he seemed to have made it a habit of calling Ryan every once in a while, especially after a frustrating day. They never spoke for more than fifteen minutes, half and hour tops, before they wished each other good night, see you in the morning, but still. As he scratched his neck and put his foot up on his knee, Ryan realized he’d been walking around waiting for that phone call now, because this day had been as frustrating as they came. There was a little dip of disappointment in his stomach when he realized Shane wasn’t going to call, and that disappointment quickly turned into an embarrassment that burned his cheeks.

He was a grown man who definitely didn’t need his damn coworker to call him and check up on him after work, for fuck’s sake. They might have struck up a friendship beyond the confines of the job, but it wasn’t like Ryan had any right to expect Shane to call him. Also, Shane had been the very source of that frustration today, so really, Ryan should be glad he’d decided not to call. With an annoyed sigh, Ryan got up to go into the kitchen again. If he hadn’t been so angry with himself, he might have noticed the other thing that itched at the back of his mind, that nagging feeling of something being _wrong._

As it was, the garrote slung over his neck and tightening across his throat was a complete surprise.

Adrenaline shot through Ryan like a flood of desperate heat and he tried to kick backwards while his hands came up to claw at the wire on his throat. Panic set in as he struggled in vain to draw a breath and black spots bloomed up at the edge of his vision. Then there was a scratching noise, a loud thump followed by a whacking noise and, the suffocating pressure on Ryan’s throat let up so suddenly that he fell to his knees. He inhaled deeply enough that he felt lightheaded, and afterwards he realized he might have passed out for a second.

When he came to again, it was to a cool hand cupping his cheek and an arm holding him upright by circling his waist. “Ryan, hey, Ryan,” he heard a familiar voice, and he blinked his eyes open to Shane’s face so close to his own that their noses were practically touching.

“You with me Ryan?” Shane said, and his words were a warm gust of air across Ryan’s mouth.

“I’m with you Shane,” Ryan managed to whisper, even though his voice was shot to hell and the air scraped down his throat like he was breathing sawdust.

“Good job,” Shane said and carefully let go of Ryan so that he could test  his own strength. He found that he could stand on his own feet but that he missed Shane’s comforting support, and he kept a hand on his arm just to be safe.

“What happened?” Ryan asked hoarsely, and he gingerly touched the sore welt on his throat. He looked down on the unconscious and handcuffed shape of Andrew Denvers sprawled on his living room floor.

“You caught the liver serial killer,” Shane said. “By goading him enough to make him want to kill you. Really, outstanding work, Agent Bergara.”

“How did you know he was coming after me?” Ryan said and looked up at Shane, who was looking down at Denvers with a frown.

“I didn’t,” Shane said and glanced back at Ryan for a split second. “It seems he cut your phone line. I got suspicious when I couldn’t reach you.”

Ryan laughed, or tried to. The chuckle turned into a series of painful coughs that had him gasping for air and prompted the return of Shane’s hands on his waist to keep him upright. “We’re bringing him in,” Ryan wheezed at last, clutching Shane’s shirtsleeve.

“And you’re seeing a health professional,” Shane said admonishingly.

“And then you’re buying me a drink” Ryan said, looking up at him.

The ghost of a smile played over Shane’s lips. “You got yourself a deal, Bergara.”

* * *

Not even the stupefied look on Steven Lim’s face when they brought in Denvers made Ryan feel better. He was, however, cleared by a medic not long after, and as promised, Shane bought him a drink. Something about almost being killed just made you feel a little blue, Ryan figured, as he sulked over the glass he’d been handed. Shane seemed to understand though, because he didn’t press the matter. He just folded his gangly body into the corner of the dim bar they’d chosen for the night, a passable enough distance from FBI headquarters that none of their coworkers would think to drop in for some after work beer.

“Let me guess, shaken but not stirred,” Ryan said and nodded to the martini Shane had bought for himself.

“Oh this?” Shane said, and Ryan could see how he considered extending the bit, make it into a joke, but then his shoulders deflated. “I really wouldn’t know. How can you even tell if it’s either?”

“I have no idea,” Ryan supplied and swirled his own drink. It was served in a tumbler, and in the light amber liquid floated a twist of lemon.

“What did you get me?” he asked, curious almost despite himself. He looked up just in time to see the slight upturning of Shane’s mouth as he answered:

“An old-fashioned scotch, they call it.”

“You think I’m old-fashioned?” Ryan asked, raising his eyebrows and lifting the glass to his mouth to take a sip. It burned on the tip of his tongue but it went down smooth. Shane shrugged, casually.

“Maybe a little,” he said. “Not in a bad way.”

Ryan laughed, but it was humorless. He cupped the tumbler in both hands and stared into it, wondering if it would be too dramatic to down the rest of it in one gulp.

“I feel like an idiot,” he said. Shane seemed to have no comeback, so Ryan went on. “I thought he... I thought it was something inhuman. But it was just a shitty guy who almost fucking killed me.”

“Hey,” Shane said, and his voice was soft in a way Ryan had never heard before. He put his hand on Ryan’s arm on the table, just below his bent elbow. When Ryan looked up, something of the softness in Shane’s voice seemed to have taken up residence in his eyes. “I wish it had been a monster. It sucks that an actual human being can do such fucked up things.”

Ryan gave a snort and looked back down. Shane’s grip on his arm tightened, just enough to be barely perceptible.

“It’s to your credit that you believe humans are better than that, Ryan,” Shane said and pulled his hand back. There was nothing Ryan could think to say in reply so he just took another sip and made sure to keep his eyes down and the hot swirl of emotions inside him safely in check.


	5. Episode 3, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s time for Unidentified Flying Objects!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and some of Shane's POV!

Ryan had insisted on getting Shane back for that drink after his near-murder, and who was Shane to say no to that? He lived by three rules: don’t believe everything you hear, don’t eat yellow snow, and never say no to a good looking fellow offering you a drink.

Even if said good looking fellow happened to be your colleague.

So here he was, in the same bar as last time; as the last several times in fact, because by now the two of them had developed an elaborate drink bartering system. Because it was a work night, they'd decided to forego the hard liquor, and Shane accepted the beer Ryan handed him with the minimum amount of sneering.

“All right, you may be asking why I brought you here tonight,” Shane said and put his head down to touch the rim of the glass with his lips. Ryan raised his eyebrows, sitting straight-backed and unimpressed in his chair.

“I asked _you_ out tonight,” Ryan corrected coolly, and then he bit his lower lip and looked down at his glass.

Shane waved his hand. “Details,” he said. “The fact of the matter is that we have an air force colonel on the loose.”

“Tell me more,” Ryan said, and Shane never ceased to be amazed at how Ryan’s dark eyes tended to spark with a smile, always threatening to burst into a full-body laughter at a moment’s notice. Shane straightened up  where he sat in the battered sofa and laced his fingers around the beer glass.

“He stole a military vehicle a few months back, but there was a raid and they got it back. He was a test pilot at at an Air Force Base in Illinois and he has not been seen since the raid.”

Ryan’s brow furrowed and Shane went on, “The military will not comment on his condition. His wife reported this to the FBI as a kidnapping, but it ended up on my desk because the FBI refused to investigate.”

“Why?” Ryan asked, effectively cutting to the chase. Shane could only give a shrug in reply.

“Six other pilots have been reported missing from the base in the last thirty years,” he said and leaned forward over the table. “But let me tell you something you’re going to love.”

Ryan also leaned forward, shrinking the distance between them so they were looking directly into each other’s eyes. The noise of the bar, conversation and the clinking of glasses, seemed to fade into the background and Shane knew he had to be grinning like a lunatic. “This airbase is rumoured to work with experimental aircrafts.”

There it was. That glint in Ryan’s eye sparked into a full-blown grin.

“You’re kidding,” he said, sounding positively gleeful, and Shane felt a happy little flutter in his stomach.

“I’m absolutely not,” he said, smiling and raising his beer in a toast. Ryan clinked his own glass against his and they both drank deeply.

The one beer turned into several after that, and every edge turned pleasantly blurry after a while. Ryan’s laughter was infectious, and Shane was smiling like an idiot by the time he found his way to the gents. On his way back out he bumped into someone.

“Oops, sorry,” he said and tried to wrangle his own wild proportions into control in the cramped space of the hallway. The man was wearing a coat, which Shane thought was funny, because they were inside.

“You should let the case go,” the man said, and Shane had to pull a mental one-eighty that, quite frankly, wasn’t the easiest on four beers.

“What are you talking about?” Shane asked and looked closely at the man. He was half turned away with his collar pulled up to obscure his mouth and his hat pulled down over his brow, but Shane caught a glimpse of wary, wide eyes and a straight nose.

“I’m someone who can help you,” the man answered, and Shane raised his eyebrows to convey his skepticism. The man hurried to add,“ I want to help you. I have connections on the inside, so trust me when I say that you want to leave this case in Illinois alone.”

“Wait just a minute,” Shane said and crossed his arms. The man did no such thing; instead he turned on his heel and hurried along the corridor to get out into the bar room. Shane had to fight gravity, inebriation and his own too-long limbs to take up the chase, and by the time he emerged by the bar, the man was long gone - and Shane could see above everyone else’s heads, so he was certain the man was indeed not there anymore.

Ryan was up by the counter, evidently in the process of getting them another round of beers, and Shane locked eyes with him when he did his third fruitless sweep over the clientele. He must have seen something on Shane’s face, because Ryan abandoned the beer immediately to approach him.

“Everything all right?” he asked, and he looked guardedly serious, like he was prepared for Shane to tell him it was all a joke but really wanted to make sure he was okay. His eyes were huge and honest, and Shane had to inhale deeply, fight against the instinct to lose himself in them.

“Some guy just cornered me by the bathroom to tell me to leave this case alone,” Shane said. Ryan’s mouth opened, his arms falling to his sides from where they’d been crossed over his chest. When they first met, Shane had been suspicious of Ryan’s motives, wondering if he’d been sent by the higher-ups to make sure Shane was keeping in line. But every day Ryan wore his heart on his sleeve and Shane had soon realized it was impossible to mistrust him. Even if Ryan had been sent in with ulterior motives, those had to have evaporated long ago.

“Dude, you’re kidding me,” Ryan said and gripped Shane’s arm. He moved in close enough that Shane caught a whiff of his aftershave, faint but still noticeable. He had to put his hands in his pockets to stop himself from touching Ryan back. The urge was like an itch in his palms, and he curled his fingers against the denim of his pants.

“He said that he had connections on the inside.”

Ryan’s brow furrowed, and he turned around like he was trying to spot the man, long gone though he was. Shane mourned the loss of his hand - it had been warm and reassuring. “What, like - the government?” he asked, and Shane could only shrug.

“I suppose so,” he said, keeping his tone conversational even though he felt a sick churning in his gut. Someone had shadowed them to this location. They’d been watched.

“He should have given us some useful information then,” Ryan said, turning back to Shane with his jaw set like he always did when he’d made a decision. “So, when are we going to Illinois?”

The churning in Shane’s stomach turned into butterflies with the timid little smile Ryan sent him. He wasn’t alone in this. “As soon as we’re sober enough to drive,” he promised.

* * *

* * *

“Don’t turn it up louder, Jesus Christ!” Shane complained when Ryan fiddled with the radio volume button.

“You might not care about the World Baseball League, but I do!” Ryan said while keeping his eyes firmly on the road, the referee’s voice filling his ears. “Besides, if I’m driving fourteen fucking hours to the damn Prairie State, I’m in charge of the radio.”

“Don’t you talk ill of my home state, you schmuck!” Shane protested, and Ryan shot him a quick glance.

“You’re from Illinois?” he asked, but then quickly masked his surprise with a joke. “You know, that explains so much about you.”

“You’re the one to talk, California boy,” Shane said with an audible scoff. “Mister ‘anything below sixty degrees has me bundling up until I’m a Michelin man’.”

“You’re so weird,” Ryan groaned and stepped on the gas to pass a truck on the highway.

 _“I’m_ weird?” Shane said and out of the corner of his eye Ryan could see him gesticulating wildly. “You refused to sleep in a hotel because it was reported to be haunted!”

“It gave me a bad feeling, okay!” Ryan said loudly. “I’m sorry I value a good night’s sleep!” A brief silence fell between them, before Ryan sniffed and said, “Oh my god, did you just fart?”

He looked at Shane leaning back against his seat, and the tight lipped grin was all the answer he needed. “You’re the _worst,_ Madej!”

Shane’s laughter almost drowned out the radio announcement that the Philadelphia Phillies had won against the Atlanta Braves.

* * *

Mrs Barkley, the wife of the missing air force colonel, was the very picture of hospitality when they showed up on her immaculate doorstep. She ushered them in and wouldn’t take no for an answer when she asked them if they wanted coffee, and she kept up a pleasant level of small talk throughout the process of brewing it and setting out the china. But then, when she asked them to sit down in her spotless living room and they politely took place in the modest two-person couch while she sat down in a red armchair, a small crack appeared in her facade. Her smile wavered when Shane asked her to retell the story of her husband’s disappearance, and she gripped her coffee cup so hard her knuckles whitened.

Ryan inched out so he was sitting on the edge of the couch and set his coffee cup down, to eradicate the barriers between him and Mrs Barkley. He tried his most easygoing smile and said, “Why don’t you just tell us a little bit about your husband, Mrs Barkley.”

She smiled at that, even though her eyes were brimming with unshed tears. Ryan shifted and put his hands on his knees and listened intently as she described her husband as a conscientious and loving man who had the habit of ironing even his socks. “It’s just so unlike him to disappear without a word,” she said and pressed the heel of her hand against her eyes to stop the tears from falling. “He hated surprises, or changing plans. I wanted to throw him a birthday surprise party once, and when he found out, he was in such a state that I had to cancel everything.”

She gave a little hiccuping laugh before she hid her face in her coffee cup. When she set the cup down, Ryan briefly touched her hand and smiled in encouragement. Mrs Barkley smiled back at him through the tears and said, “Thank you.”

Ryan sat back a little and exchanged a look with Shane, who seemed a little off kilter. He was looking at Ryan like he had grown a second head or something, and Shane didn’t know how to pretend everything was normal. Shrugging internally, Ryan returned his attention to Mrs Barkley, whose hands were shaking just enough for her cup to clink against the saucer when she lifted it up again.

“He started to change though, a few months back,” she said, and Ryan felt Shane straighten up where they were sitting flush on the small couch. She sniffled and went on. “He started to act a little erratically. Yelled at the children sometimes, without any provocation.”

Ryan surreptitiously looked around the neat living room. He had a hard time imagining children in these spotless surroundings.

“I know he worked with highly classified things,” she said tightly, and Ryan could tell she was trying to regain her composure. “But everything he did, he did for this country. He wouldn’t just leave like this.”

Other than that she really had nothing more to tell them than what they’d learned from the official report - Colonel Barkley had been a model officer until, seemingly out of nowhere, he’d snapped and stolen a vehicle, where the trail abruptly went cold. Ryan got up and thanked Mrs Barkley profoundly, squeezing her hand as he left her their contact information. Shane followed suit, mumbling a subdued goodbye as they left.

“You okay?” Ryan asked as they took place in the car. Shane turned and leaned his arm on the narrow window ledge.

“Of course I’m okay,” he said. “Why?”

There was something measured in Shane’s nonchalance that made Ryan give him a suspicious look. Shane met his gaze openly with a nonplussed expression, and Ryan decided to let it drop.

* * *

They took in at a motel and, to spare the Bureau’s funds, decided to share a room. Ryan dumped his duffel on one of the beds, and Shane put his bag on the other before he clapped his hands together.

“Well, I’m off to talk to the locals!” he announced brightly and went back out the door before Ryan could so much as say sasquatch. He was left half-heartedly unpacking his clothes, and then he sighed and reached for the telephone.

Several hours and multiple failed attempts on Ryan’s part to book a meeting with the director of the air force base, Shane breezed back in through the door with a healthy flush to his cheeks and a sparkle in his eye that, quite frankly, made Ryan resent him deeply. “You’re going to love this town Ryan! Just about every person in town can report UFO sightings!”

“Well, I wouldn’t know,” Ryan sighed and pressed his knuckles against his eyes as he flopped down on his bed. “I’ve been stuck inside this shitty little motel room trying in vain to get a hold of someone actually important at that base.”

Shane made a little tutting noise. “Sounds like someone’s blood sugar is real low,” he teased and Ryan wanted to kick him in the shin, but he was too far away.

“Fuck off and find us some food then,” he said tersely, and was surprised when Shane said:

“Sure! I know just the place.”

* * *

Ryan’s eyes felt like they were filled with gravel, and he blamed the bone-deep tiredness for his lack of observational skills and the monumental lapse in judgement in allowing Shane to order for him.

“No,” he said, when the steaming plates had been set in front of them in the restaurant. Shane looked like a cat that got the cream, gripping his knife and fork with each hand like he couldn’t wait to unhinge his jaw like a snake to swallow it all in one go.

“You can’t not try it, Ryan,” he said and prodded the spongy surface of his meal. “C’mon, I know for a fact that you love pizza.”

“This is not pizza,” Ryan said as he stared down at the deep dish, but he was betrayed by his stomach that let out a loud gurgle. Shane shrugged and started to dig in, and after a moment’s deliberation Ryan sighed and followed suit.

“Not so bad, is it?” Shane said teasingly when Ryan had worked his way through half the deep dish pizza in record time.

“I can’t taste anything,” Ryan said, looking up at him with a grin. “I burned my tongue on the cheese.”

Shane huffed irritably. “You barbarian,” he said dismissively and Ryan shook his head.

“It’s all right, but if you can’t eat it with one hand, it’s not really a pizza.”

“Barbarian,” Shane repeated, like Ryan had just made his point.

“If deep dish pizza is the pinnacle of your culture, I’d rather be without it,” Ryan said and used the napkin to wipe the grease from his lips. “So tell me, what did you get out of the locals about the UFOs?”

Shane was in the middle of chewing a bite and he swallowed carefully before he recounted the few encounters he’d had, underscoring his tale with jabbing his fork into the air at key moments. “A couple of teenagers have been scared while making out, and some people whose testimony, quite frankly, I wouldn’t take seriously,” he summed up before shoveling another bite into his mouth.

“Fact remains, though, that I have not been able to get through to the base,” Ryan said. Shane didn’t say anything, still chewing, and for a moment they just looked at each other.

“Want to go check it out?” Ryan said at last, and Shane’s face split into a grin that lit up his eyes.

* * *

As they abandoned their car on the outskirts of the base, having brazenly passed a sign reading “WARNING: AREA RESTRICTED FOR MILITARY USE” and took to foot, Ryan had ample time to think about how, in the months since he’d taken up with Shane Madej and the Unsolved department, he’d been traipsing around outside in the dark a whole lot more than he had before. And he still didn’t know what the hell made Shane Madej so insistent on taking on cases that had him traipsing around outside in the dark, but here they were, without flashlights and only open fields as far as the eye could see. Ryan had brought a camera, on the off chance that they would actually see something, but he started to regret it as it grew heavy around his neck while they walked.

“According to my calculations,” Shane said, stopping dead so that Ryan almost walked into him. “This is the spot where the teenagers were making out and almost swallowed their tongues when they saw something above.”

Ryan wrinkled his nose at Shane’s choice of words, took a step past him and looked around. The monotony of the fields were broken up by a little brook - hardly more than a glorified ditch, if Ryan was being honest - that curved around a large tree. For a makeout spot, it wasn’t half bad. Ryan had made out in some truly questionable places in his youth, and this didn’t even qualify in the bottom ten. The grass might be scratchy, but if you wore sturdy clothes you could grab your partner by the lapel and sit down in the shade of the tree, let the murmur of the running water lull you into the illusion of privacy.

Ryan turned towards Shane to share some of his observations, but in doing so his hand made contact with Shane’s chest, the warm fabric of his jacket, and the idle thought struck Ryan in the same instant - what if he did just that. Grabbed his lapel and dragged Shane down in the grass with him, pressed their lips together in a hot rush of air. Ryan felt a violent blush rise on his cheeks and pulled his hand away immediately. He was thankful for the cover of darkness when he said, “So do we wait for the lights in the sky to come to us or do we seek them out?”

Shane’s facial expression was inscrutable in the night as he peered down at Ryan and for a breathless instant, Ryan wondered if Shane’s thoughts had been heading in the same direction as his. He quickly pushed the notion away - Ryan hadn’t had time for anything resembling dating since he took up with Unsolved Cases, he was just missing a human connection. His entire family out in California, his friend pool drying up in D.C. It was only natural. It didn’t mean anything.

“Normally I love waiting,” Shane said, and his voice was like a cold drop of water down Ryan’s spine, tugging him out of his panicked reverie. “But I think these lights might need some coaxing.”

So they kept on trudging through the field, and Ryan sort of hated Shane and his ridiculously long legs that allowed him to trot through the high grass like an unbothered giraffe while Ryan had to fight to follow him. Once again Shane stopped dead, and this time Ryan smacked right into his backside. He had to grab Shane’s waist to regain his balance and right himself, and he felt Shane stiffen underneath his hands.

“Sorry,” Ryan said and lifted his hands.

“Look,” Shane said and pointed, and Ryan’s gaze followed the line of his arm up to the sky lit by light pollution and the faint remnant of the sunset. It was still dark enough that the two bright spots were easy to see, the pattern they wove against the clouds obvious.

“That’s not aircrafts,” Ryan said and lifted his camera, the sound of the shutter loud in the night. “No way they could move like that.”

“Could be searchlights,” Shane said skeptically. Ryan shook his head even though he knew Shane wasn’t looking at him and kept taking pictures.

“I don’t think so,” was all he said. The clouds weren’t thick enough to mirror that much light back, and Ryan knew Shane knew it too. They watched the lights move in the sky for a while - Ryan couldn’t tell for how long even if he wanted to, but as the night darkened by degrees the lights became easier to see.

After a while, a faint droning noise reached their ears, and Ryan started. “What’s that?” he asked, and Shane craned his neck to look around.

“Helicopter,” he said. “And that sure as hell is searchlights.”

They didn’t reach a verbal consensus - both of them just turned on their heels and started to leg it back as fast as they could, Ryan pressing the camera to his chest. The noise of the helicopter grew louder and Ryan felt it reverberating in his breastbone, together with the wild thumping of his heart. They reached the makeout spot, and before Ryan could think better of it, he grabbed Shane by the waist again and hauled him in under the tree, pressing both him and himself against the trunk, hoping that the thick foliage would hide them from view.

The noise of the helicopter rose to a deafening roar, and the searchlights even filtered through the leaves, painting the both of them in mottled white light, before it passed and the noise gradually faded again. Ryan became aware of the sound of Shane’s heartbeat over his own, where they were pressed together against the three, and Ryan had to swallow before he slowly leaned away. Shane was still breathing hard from the sprint, and he didn’t look at Ryan at all.

“I don’t know what to make of this,” he admitted, and Ryan laughed.

“Me neither, big guy,” he said, and he was only partially talking about the lights. They went back to the car, walking side by side in the grass.


	6. Episode 3, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Batting five hundred.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it wasn’t clear from the last chapter; I know nothing about baseball, but many of Shane’s opinions on it are relatable.

Back at the motel, Ryan felt absurdly grateful that he was sleeping in the same room as Shane. Having someone else nearby was reassuring; hearing Shane shuffling around under his covers and snoring softly was soothing instead of annoying for once. Still, Ryan tossed and turned for what felt like ages - he only grabbed a couple of fitful hours of sleep before he rose, bleary eyed and hoarse-voiced, and whacked the Shane-shaped nest on the bed so he’d get up and they could get breakfast.

They were just on their way out the door when the phone rang. It went to voicemail immediately, and Ryan blinked as Mrs Barkley’s voice sounded from the machine. _“Hello, agents? My husband, he’s... he’s come home. He was at the military hospital, but he’s better now. Thank you for your trouble, but he’s fine.”_

Ryan basically vaulted over the bed to reach the phone, but the message ended with a click just as he lifted the receiver. “Fuck,” he muttered, hearing only white noise when he pressed it to his ear. He turned to Shane, whose eyes were round in surprise.

“That stinks,” he said.

“Yeah, you think?” Ryan snorted and set the phone down. “Come on, let’s go.”

Ryan had his hand on the car door when the two men reached them. They were dressed almost identically, in dark coats and black hats, sunglasses obscuring their eyes but not the jeering tilt of their mouths or the threatening slant of their shoulders. The hair at the back of Ryan’s neck stood up. He could practically smell the conflict approaching.

“Can we help you gentlemen?” Shane said, and if Ryan didn’t know better, he’d say he sounded downright polite.

“You should run along home before your boss starts to miss you,” one of the men said, the one who veered off to Shane’s side of the car.

“Colonel Barkley has returned, there’s no need for you to continue your investigation,” the one on Ryan’s side said, and Ryan wanted to knock his stupid sunglasses off his stupid face.

“Who do you think you are?” Ryan said but the man didn’t answer. Instead he reached for the camera around Ryan’s neck and before Ryan had the chance to react, the man had yanked it towards him and ripped the film out.

“What the fuck!” Ryan yelled and grabbed the man by the arm, but he was off-balance and the man tackled him by pushing an elbow into his stomach. Ryan was slammed into the car with enough force that it drove the air from his lungs, and he heard Shane yell his name. By the time Shane had helped Ryan up on his feet, the men had scarpered, and Ryan would have screamed in frustration if he wasn’t so winded.

“They’re right,” Shane muttered, hands still on Ryan. “Without Mrs Barkley on our side, we don’t have any jurisdiction to keep going.”

“And they ruined whatever proof we had of the lights in the sky,” Ryan said and mournfully touched his camera. He’d lugged it all the way out there for nothing.

“But you know, that only proves that they’ve got something to hide,” Shane said, and bumped his hip against Ryan, softly. “Let me drive us back.”

* * *

Ryan was happy to let up the wheel, and he was busy enough simmering in his own sense of abject failure that it took him a good while to realize it.

“This isn’t the way back to D.C,” he said, looking out the window at the sun, passing its zenith in the entirely wrong place.

“Uh, yeah,” Shane said slowly, and Ryan blinked. It was the first time he had ever heard Shane sound embarrassed, and his interest was further piqued when Shane scratched his neck and kept his eyes on the road ahead. The silence stretched out until Ryan cleared his throat.

“Care to tell me where we’re going then, Shane?”

“Check the glove compartment,” was his reply, and Ryan frowned when he reached for it. He pulled out two tickets to the Toronto vs. White Sox game, and for a moment Ryan was sure he’d hit his head when he had been shoved against the car.

“What the fuck,” he said, and he sounded like he had never regained control of his lungs either, his voice was so breathless.

“You’re not going to get a birthday present from me, that’s for sure,” Shane said, and he was trying to sound stern, but Ryan’s pulse was buzzing in his ears and he was so excited he couldn’t sit still.

“How the fuck did you swing these?” he asked and looked at Shane, who shrugged, eyes still trained on the road.

“I have an uncle who works for the Sox,” he said. “He pulled some strings, I promised to change his light bulbs, it’s all good.”

Ryan laughed, the exuberant joy of it in such a sharp contrast to the earlier disappointment of another failed case. “And you told me you didn’t care about baseball,” he teased.

“I don’t!” Shane protested. “I really, really don’t. My dad put us in the little league completely without my consent, and I proceeded to play more baseball games in one summer than I ever care to play in my entire life and I hated every second of it!”

“Wow. You must be really bad at it,” Ryan said, and Shane scoffed, but he was also grinning.

“Bet I could teach you a thing or two, little guy,” he said, and it was Ryan’s turn to shrug.

“I’m sure you could, I’ve never played a game in my life.”

“What?” Shane exclaimed, his voice going high and his knuckles going white as he gripped the wheel tighter. “The great Ryan Bergara? Only a bystander to the sport he claims to love?”

“We were a basketball family,” he said in his defense. “And I bet I could take you out on the court, even as tall as you are.”

“Yeah, you sure look like a regular Michael Jordan.”

“And you have the nerve to claim you hate sports!”

Shane turned the radio on and turned the volume all the way up, as if to drown out Ryan’s words. Ryan only laughed and Shane pointedly didn’t say anything, so Ryan settled back, content in knowing that he’d won the exchange. The radio was broadcasting a news segment, but they only caught the tail end of the weather rapport for Illinois. Ryan tuned it out and fixed his gaze on the vast fields passing by outside the passenger side window, allowing his excitement and happiness to warm him from the inside.

A song started to play, a soft piano and a soft voice that was vaguely familiar, and Ryan blinked when Shane shifted, suddenly and sharply, to reach out and turn the volume back down. A guitar and drum joined in as REO Speedwagon sang: _"And I can’t fight this feeling anymore”_ and Ryan grinned. He hadn’t heard the song for ages, and this kind of buttery rock ballad held a special place in his heart, tended to bring him back to all those terrible makeout spots of his youth.

Shane probably didn’t have the same kind of associations, Ryan mused as Shane shifted yet again and changed the channel in the middle of a _“I’ve forgotten what I started fighting for._ ”

“Not an REO fan?” Ryan asked absently, and Shane gave a just as absent-minded hum in response.

* * *

* * *

Shane hadn’t been kidding when he said he hated baseball - the entire concept made him taste grass and he could practically feel the sweat in his armpits as he was forced to run, squinting against the blinding sunlight. Watching the sport wasn’t any better - it was tedious, boring when it wasn’t frustrating to be completely unable to change the course of events out on the field. But attending a big match like this with Ryan - Shane could see himself having fun. Ryan’s excitement was contagious; when he got to his feet to cheer, Shane was almost swept up with him.

Afterwards, when Ryan almost bounced with every step he took as they made their way back to the car, Shane thought that he might even grow to like it. The notion was followed by a sharp twist of fear somewhere deep in his stomach. _Don’t get used to this Madej,_ he berated himself. _It never ends well when you care about someone._

And still, seeing Ryan so happy made something entirely selfish unfurl alongside that twinge of trepidation inside Shane, and because of it, when they were back home in D.C (which was home, for a certain definition of the word, certainly) he left a message on Ryan’s phone late one evening. Despite his aversion to sports, Shane did own a sports jacket, so he shrugged it on and went out into the evening with his mind carefully blank. Ryan might show, or he might not. In either case, Shane was going to be fine.

No reason it wouldn’t be fine.

Shane hadn’t had a reason to take a shower as soon as he came home from Illinois, trying his damndest not to think about Ryan’s smile, or the feeling of Ryan’s hand on his waist as he stumbled. There was no reason the sight of Ryan putting his hand on Mrs Barkley’s in a comforting gesture had made Shane feel wildly jealous, because Ryan was like that with everyone. He joked with everyone, threw his smiles around like they were worthless, and maybe it wasn’t flirting exactly, but Ryan had a way with people that made them giggle and want to tell him things. _Shane_ wanted to giggle and tell him things, but he wouldn’t. Instead he would keep trying to make Ryan laugh, because that at least was something he could do for him. He hoped that Ryan would show up, and that he would laugh.

“You’ve got it bad, Madej,” he muttered to himself as he walked, the words dissolving unheeded in the night. But then again, he’d never been good at doing things half-heartedly. He was always just a little too much in everything he did, he knew that.

There was something special about a baseball field late at night, Shane mused as he watched the grass lit by artificial light, draining it of color and bright against the natural darkness. The clouds of condensation that evaporated after every puff of breath he let out when he swung the bat. He was surprised to realize how quickly muscle memory and instinct started to do the work for him - the whine of the ball through the air, the resounding thwack when the bat made contact, the way his foot twisted to brace for impact, the way he could calculate the trajectory without much conscious input. It felt good to lose himself in it, to not have to stand the constant running commentary that usually was his mind.

It was a shock to hear Ryan’s voice - not unwelcome, but it still made Shane swing too fast and too high, and the ball thudded into the sand behind him. He signaled to the kid he’d bribed to operate the launch machine, and turned on his heel to lock eyes with his colleague.

“Hey there yourself,” Shane said and twirled the bat in his hands. Ryan was on the inside of the field, leaning against the chain link fence with his arms crossed. He was dressed in a varsity jacket that looked cozy and warm even though he kept it unbuttoned. A smile was playing at the edge of his generous mouth and he was looking at Shane with narrowed eyes, like he wanted to figure something out. Shane felt flushed and warm from the exercise, but he still gestured with the bat for Ryan to come closer.

“What is this?” Ryan asked, that perpetual edge of laughter to his voice that made a million and one half-formed jokes flicker through Shane’s mind, anything to ignite a proper laugh. This time though, Shane only smiled, spread his legs and bent down to tap the bat against the ground.

“What’s it look like, hotshot?” he said. “I’m gonna teach you how to bat some balls, my good man!”

“Sure you are,” Ryan said, still sounding infuriatingly amused as he approached. “All right big guy, what kernels of sport wisdom do you have to impart with?”

“Hit the ball,” Shane said and threw him the bat. Ryan caught it with both hands despite the explosion of laughter that made him curl in a little on himself, and Shane grinned as well when he backed two paces to let Ryan step up. Ryan assumed such an exaggerated and ridiculous pose with the bat held high that Shane had to laugh and reach for him.

“No, no, man, you can’t-” he tried, but Ryan only wiggled his butt and raised the bat even higher, so Shane kept laughing. He remembered his brother teaching him, when they were kids and Shane barely reached his brother’s waist. He carefully put the memory aside even as he walked up to Ryan to nudge his leg into position with a careful tap of his foot.

“Like this,” Shane said, and reached over Ryan’s shoulder to inch his hand down on the bat. It still wasn’t right, so he reached out with his other arm, under Ryan’s other elbow to grip the end of the bat, but it wasn’t before he inhaled the smell of Ryan’s hair - warm, with a faint note of coconut - that Shane realized they were pressed back to front, feet aligned.

Ryan didn’t protest, he didn’t even tense at Shane’s mild manhandling, so Shane swallowed and decided to keep going. He would only make it weird if he disentangled now. “Okay,” he said, and he saw how his breath made a few strands of Ryan’s black hair flutter. “You got to swing hip first, then arm. Keep your wrists straight.”

“Hip first, then arm, wrists straight,” Ryan repeated, and Shane had to swallow the words. _Good boy._

Shane pushed, just a little, and Ryan went with it, allowing Shane to demonstrate the proper swing. Carefully, intentionally, Shane kept his mind blank, but he was still aware of the explicit physicality of it - Ryan’s body yielding under his but moving on its own accord, the muscles in his back bunching and then stretching against Shane’s chest with the movement. Shane fully intended to extricate himself and let Ryan try his wings on his own, but then Ryan yelled, “Okay, I’m ready!” and the kid across the field gave them a big thumbs up before launching the next ball, and Ryan whooped with joy when he and Shane swung the bat together.

It actually hit the ball, but a little off-center, so that it slipped and hit the ground a few feet away. Ryan laughed and swung wildly against the following ball, only managing to poke it with the top of the bat. The next one, Shane took a firmer hold of the bat, Ryan’s hands warm under his, and used his hips to nudge them into the right full-body arc.

The loud thwack of the bat hitting the ball dead on and the majestic trajectory of it sailing high and far sent a tingling sensation down Shane’s spine. He imagined Ryan felt the same, because he gave a little gasp and another laugh that sounded breathless. Shane shifted his legs and allowed himself to feel the warmth of Ryan pressed against his body, already eyeing the following launch.

Ryan laughed again, and shifted his grip on the bat. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry to try on his own, and Shane wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He would take what he could get, for as long as he could get it.


	7. Episode 4, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bigfoot; mating call

Makeout spots haunted by UFOs notwithstanding, Ryan figured it had been too long since he’d gone out with people.

He liked dates, even when they led nowhere - he liked getting to know people, he liked casual flirting - so it had been quite easy to stop by the Communications office one morning, lean an elbow on Kelsey’s desk and ask her if she had any plans for tonight. Of course Kelsey _did_ have plans for tonight, but she flicked her hair - ineffectually, as it was bound up in a professional bun - and smiled and told him she would be able to get away if he was paying for the drinks.

“Of course,” Ryan said, and there was nothing coy about the smile he sent her in return - he was genuinely delighted.

“Of course what? he heard Shane say, and Ryan turned to find his partner recently emerged from the rec room with a folder under his arm and eyes wide in genuine curiosity.

Ryan hadn’t seen him all morning, and he thought Shane looked a little tired. His hair was wild and he evidently hadn’t had time to shave because Ryan could see the grain of his stubble darkening his narrow jaw. “Oh, hey, Madej!” Ryan said, because something about the upper levels of the FBI headquarters made him slip back into a semblance of formality. “Wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

“Nor I you, Bergara” Shane said and walked up to them and leaned on Kelsey’s desk as well by putting the folder down and settling the flat of his palm on top of it.  “What are you crazy kids up to?”

“Ryan just asked me out,” Kelsey said and pulled a strand of hair from behind her ear to wind it around her finger. The use of his first name hung conspicuously in the air between the three of them, Ryan thought - a definite statement, but of what, he couldn’t tell. He shifted and cleared his throat, but before he could say anything, Shane also cleared his throat and snatched his folder back from the desk and straightened up.

“Okay, well. Good for you. Good talking to you, Kelsey,” he said. “Agent Bergara, a case has actually come up, so we should, uh.” His words trailed off into a gesture of his hand, the movement made big by the sheer length of his arm.

“All right,” Ryan agreed, and he shot Kelsey a parting smile as he turned to follow Shane toward the elevator.

“See you later, Ryan!” Kelsey called. In front of Ryan, Shane seemed to draw himself up, made himself tall where he usually slouched over, and Ryan frowned.

“You okay, Shane?” he asked when Shane leaned forward to press the elevator button.

“Just fine,” Shane said and shot Ryan a tight-lipped smile that didn’t seem fine at all.

“What’s this case then?” Ryan asked and reached over to pull at the folder in Shane’s hand as they entered the elevator. Shane’s grip tightened on it and he pulled it back, seemingly on instinct.

“No, that’s not - this is not the case file!” Shane protested and held it up over his head where Ryan had no chance of reaching it, short of climbing up on the elevator handrail.

“Then what is it?” Ryan demanded, the edges of seriousness hardening around his voice when he took in Shane’s odd, deflective behaviour. Ryan saw Shane’s adam’s apple bob when he swallowed, still with his arms raised.

“This folder is just personnel paperwork,” he said. “Boring, forms for sick leave and what not.”

“Are you sick?” Ryan demanded, and this at least had Shane lowering the folder, looking at him with an incredulous expression.

“What? No!” he said. “It’s just, they just told me to do some paperwork for the department and since I am, technically, head of the Unsolved Cases department, I went and dotted the i's, crossed the x’s on our behalf.”

“Okay,” Ryan said slowly. Shane had this little ridge in between his eyebrows - not quite a frown, but not really anything else either, and Ryan had no idea what to do with it.

Shane snapped his head to the side when the elevator dinged open on the basement level, and Ryan was left in his wake as he marched towards their shared office. When Ryan managed to slip inside just before the office door closed, Shane was already hunched over his desktop, rifling through the mess. “It’s here somewhere,” he muttered, half to himself and half over his shoulder to Ryan. Ryan walked up to him, and since it was impossible to peer over his shoulder, he leaned to the side to scan the papers and folders that Shane was thumbing through.

“A-ha!” came the triumphant eureka at last, and Shane almost smacked Ryan in the face when he forcefully pulled a newspaper from the pile. Ryan ducked with a curse, and Shane laughed as he settled himself down on his desk, pulling his glasses from his shirt pocket.

“Fuck you,” Ryan said, but he was too relieved that Shane seemed more like his normal self to feel truly put out. “Will you tell me what this case is about?”

Shane cleared his throat theatrically before starting  to read from the paper, which he opened with an expert flick of his wrists. “Yesterday in Maryland, they found a body in the woods, missing its right arm and shoulder and part of the leg. They think they may have been eaten by a human.”

“That’s fucking ridiculous,” Ryan said.

Shane looked at him over the rim of his glasses, eyebrows raised high. “So aliens and ghosts are real, but you draw the line at cannibalism?”

Ryan let out a huff and tried to pull the newspaper from Shane’s hands. Shane didn’t let go, however, so Ryan found himself perched on the desk beside him, squinting as he furiously scanned the open page because he had left his own glasses on his desk. Shane shifted, but Ryan paid him no heed, stubbornly keeping his eyes on the article. “Cannibalism among humans is ritualistic, when it’s not for survival,” he said and then jabbed at a paragraph with his finger. “The place where the body was found is only a day out from the city, and a whole arm and leg missing is not ritualistic. It’s feral.”

“The bite marks indicate humanoid teeth,” Shane said, and Ryan’s finger slid down the page until it landed on the correct line.

“So what are we talking about,” he said incredulously. “Some kind of East Coast Bigfoot?”

“Maybe,” Shane said, and Ryan had to lean away to look at him.

“Really,” he said. “Agent Shane _‘I saw UFOs with my own eyes but aliens aren’t real’_ Madej thinks Sasquatch is out there haunting the Maryland woods.”

Shane shrugged, and Ryan gasped, incensed.

“You,” he said and twisted where he sat on the desk to poke Shane in the chest. Shane lifted his hands, eyes widening as he looked down at the point of contact. Ryan didn’t push hard, but Shane still swayed back on the desk, just a little. “You,” Ryan repeated and jabbed his finger against his chest again “Have some explaining to do.”

“What do you want me to say, Ryan?” Shane said, hands still in the air. “If Bigfoot is real we might have a chance of catching it. If it’s not real, then no harm done, right?”

“Right,” Ryan said suspiciously and let his hand fall. They sat side by side for a while in complete silence, with Ryan trying to establish eye contact and Shane stubbornly blinking up into the ceiling. Then Shane slapped his thighs with a loud clap and got up.

“You coming with me to hunt Bigfoot then, Special Agent Ryan Bergara?” he said and straightened his suit jacket. Ryan put his hands in his pockets, peered up at Shane before he shrugged as well.

“Yeah, all right,” was all he said, but the smile Shane sent him made one tug at the corner of Ryan’s mouth as well.

* * *

“So,” Ryan said, with what he hoped was the utmost patience, hunching his shoulders at the insistent drizzle of rain as he looked up at Shane, who in turn was staring moodily at the police station. He said nothing. “So we drove all the way out here,” Ryan began anew. “And as it turns out, the local police does not even remotely want to hand the case over to us, or even let us help.”

Shane made a humming noise that sounded like, _well yes, I guess you could put it that way._ Ryan sighed. “Well,” he said and straightened his shoulders. “I’m going back to D.C. I’ve got a date tonight.”

He was already sitting behind his wheel, shivering against his damp jacket, when he realized Shane hadn’t followed his cue. Frowning, Ryan reached over the passenger seat and opened the door. “Hey,” he said to Shane, still standing where he’d left him. “Are you coming?”

Shane moved closer, put his hand on the doorframe and leaned down to peer inside the car. “I think I’m going to stay here awhile,” he said, squinting at Ryan through the drops of water that had clumped his eyelashes together. “See if I can figure out what this all is about.”

Ryan flexed his hands on the wheel, and for a brief moment he considered staying with Shane. But then he remembered the flick of Kelsey’s hair, the way she’d called after him when he walked away, and then the prospect of sleeping in his own bed, with or without company. “Okay,” he said with a grin. “Well, take care Shane.”

Something flickered across Shane’s face then, but it quickly transformed into a tight-lipped smile and a nod. “I will, drive safe,” he said and closed the car door.

Ryan only hesitated for a second before he started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. When he looked in the rearview mirror, Shane had already started walking towards the town center.

* * *

Taking Kelsey out for a drink was fun, Ryan decided after an hour or two. She kept the conversation going, and she was lively in a way that made it difficult to look away. He didn’t feel the need to look at the clock, at any rate, and it was gratifying every time he made her laugh. And yet, he found himself thinking about Shane, and how great it felt when Ryan managed to make him laugh. He ordered an old fashioned scotch for himself and thought about how it was the first drink Shane had gotten for him. He sat down and made a pun about spirits when he handed Kelsey her Manhattan, and he felt put off when she didn’t make fun of him for it.

Ryan was vaguely aware that he hadn’t been putting his best foot forward, so he was a little surprised when Kelsey invited herself to his apartment. But Ryan shrugged and went with it, fumbling a little with his key as he opened the door. He hadn’t had more than that one scotch, so he really couldn’t attribute his shakiness to alcohol, which unnerved him.

He led Kelsey inside, asked her to sit down on the sofa while he made them something. A small shiver went down his back when the phantom footsteps of a murderer echoed across his mind. Before Ryan could either make the drinks or shake off the bad feeling, his phone rang. Kelsey’s eyebrows shot up, and she crossed her legs but made no move towards the phone beside the couch. Ryan shot her an apologetic smile and walked past her to answer.

“Ryan Bergara,” Ryan said, and at the same time he realized he probably shouldn’t have answered the phone at all. It was, however, too late for that, and on the line he heard Shane say:

“Ryan? Thank fuck, I need you to come bail me out.”

Ryan said nothing for a moment, he only closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ryan?” Shane repeated, his voice distorted by distance.

“I’m here,” Ryan replied. “Can you- just tell me what happened.”

“It’s all a big misunderstanding,” Shane said, and it was hard to get a read on his tone of voice over the phone, but Ryan was leaning towards sheepish. “I thought I saw something and went to investigate, and they hauled me in for trespassing.”

“Wait, what did you think you saw?” Ryan said and gripped the phone cord. Behind him, Kelsey cleared her throat.

“Come bail me out and I’ll tell you.”

“But-” Ryan said, but the line had already gone dead, and he took the phone from his ear to stare at it for a second.

“I’ll just see myself out then?” Kelsey said, getting up. Ryan froze, still with the phone in his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he said earnestly. “Work.”

“I know how it is,” Kelsey said and carefully brushed her hand down the front of her short dress. Ryan realized he hadn’t even noticed what she was wearing before now, and he set down the phone with a lump of embarrassment in his throat. She smiled at him. “I work for the Bureau too,” she added before she walked over to the door. Ryan hurried to her side and helped with her coat, so she kissed his cheek in thanks.

“I had fun tonight, Ryan,” she said, but with an inflection that made Ryan pretty sure he wouldn’t be buying her drinks in the future.

“Yeah, me too,” he said with a smile that he hoped conveyed he harbored no hard feelings. “Sorry about this, let me at least drive you home.”

Kelsey graciously allowed this, and with the radio on, the silence between them wasn’t even oppressive. When they reached her destination, she thanked him and got out. Before she closed the door, she looked like she was about to say something, but instead she pursed her red lips and nodded when Ryan bid her good night. He turned the radio up, and as he started to drive to get Shane out of jail, he wondered why he didn’t feel upset about how the evening had unfolded.

* * *

The bailing process was drawn out enough that Ryan felt like he was about to fall asleep on his feet by the time Shane was let out and given back his possessions. Shane looked tired as well, drawn and moody as he followed Ryan out to the car.

“We’re going to find a place to sleep for a couple of hours before you tell me everything,” Ryan said, and for once Shane didn’t argue. Ryan was too sleepy to be properly elated about it, but he filed it away for later as they went out in search of passable motel. Ryan let Shane handle the transaction - something he felt was only right - and he barely noticed the chipped wallpaper or the suspicious stain in the uppermost corner of the wall before he unbuttoned his dress shirt and collapsed on the bed in his t-shirt. He was asleep practically before his head hit the pillow.

Ryan woke several hours later to a quilt draped over him and the sound of Shane talking on the telephone. He sat up, grimacing at yesterday’s wrinkled pants scraping over sensitive skin, and rubbed his eyes.

“Oh, good, you’re up,” Shane said. “There’s a park ranger who wants to meet us.”

“A who that wants what now?” Ryan said and fought back a yawn, even as he looked around for his shoes.

“I’ll tell you on the way,” Shane said, and Ryan sighed. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and realized that Shane must have put the quilt over him. He looked up, but Shane was already by the door, back turned and on his way out. Ryan couldn’t come up with a way to mention the subject or even a reason why he should, so he just got up and grabbed his shirt to follow him.

“Let me drive, I know where we’re going,” Shane said, and Ryan was still too tired to argue. Those few hours of sleep hadn’t helped much, and he threw Shane the keys. It felt a little odd to sit on the passenger side of his own car, but Ryan waited patiently for Shane to adjust the seat to his satisfaction before he started the car.

“Why the hell were you arrested last night?” Ryan said at the same time Shane said:

“See, here’s the thing.”

He drummed his fingers against the wheel with an irritated sigh, and Ryan shot him a look before he returned his gaze out the window. Shane seemed serious. “I was just investigating. The person missing an arm and a leg? He was living in the outskirts of the city, so I went there to, you know, investigate. Our actual job.”

“Uh-huh,” Ryan said slowly, crossing his arms over the seatbelt spanning his chest. “That doesn’t explain how you got arrested.”

“I was talking to the people who last had seen him alive, just strangers on the street. They talked about seeing some, and I quote ‘huge, dark creature” lurking around.

“You sure they weren’t just describing you?” Ryan quipped.

“You’re so funny you should have your own show,” Shane replied, deadpan.

“I’ll be here all week,” Ryan agreed, but then nudged Shane in the side with his elbow. “What happened then?”

Shane glanced down at Ryan’s elbow briefly before looking back up at the road. “I investigated the site of his disappearance, of course. Not much to see, but then saw something- someone in an alleyway, and when I went over to talk to them, they took off and I gave chase.”

Ryan tried to imagine Shane giving chase, and had to concede that the image of his gangly form hurtling towards you in a dark alleyway had to be terrifying. Ryan would bolt, no doubt about it. “And before I know what’s what, a couple of cops have me at gunpoint, telling me to stand down,” Shane said. “Said I was trespassing and resisting arrest, which, quite frankly, is ridiculous.”

“Yeah, I’ve never known you to be anything other than absolutely compliant and easy-going,” Ryan said sarcastically and shifted uncomfortably  in his seat.

“Fuck you,” Shane said cheerfully.

“So do you have any theories? You don’t actually think the huge and dark creature is a Bigfoot, do you?”

“You act like skepticism is fun for me,” Shane said, and Ryan was completely unprepared for his words to have that serious edge to them. Shane just gave an irritated huff without elaborating further, and Ryan was at a loss for how to respond, so he didn’t. A headache was building up behind his eyes anyway, and he rubbed at his forehead, hoping to stave it off. Coffee would have been fucking wonderful, but Shane’s driving had already brought them outside the city proper, past the suburbs even.

“We’re nearly there,” he said, like he’d been reading Ryan’s thoughts.

“Where?” Ryan asked, just to be as obnoxious as possible. Shane didn’t rise to the bait but pulled the car to a stop by the roadside, precisely smack-dab in the middle of nowhere, if Ryan was any judge.

“I agreed to meet up with the park ranger here,” Shane said and tossed the car keys back to Ryan before he got out of the car. Ryan put the keys in his pocket and followed Shane out, putting his elbows on the roof of his car and fixing Shane with a look.

“You did, did you? Why?” he said. He was getting mighty tired of pulling answers out of Shane like this, and he couldn’t help but feel Shane was punishing him for something.

“He says he’s seen Bigfoot,” Shane said, he grinned at Ryan. Ryan threw his hands out.

“So you do believe in Bigfoot!”

“If people have seen shapes lumbering around the forest near where they found a dead body, I want to look into it,” Shane said primly and turned around. “Come on, we need to hike a bit from here.”

“You,” Ryan said when he burst into a short jog to catch up with Shane, “have never hiked a mile in your life.”

“Neither have you,” Shane replied, and, well, that Ryan couldn’t deny.

Shane did, however, seem to know where they were going, because before too long a small cabin could be seen through the trees, just off the side of the trail. He strode confidently up to the door, but it opened before he could knock. They were both ushered inside by a middle-aged man in a broad brimmed hat who introduced himself as Billy Jones. His hand was big and calloused when Ryan shook it, and Ryan tried to get a read on his dark expression under bushy eyebrows.

“Why are we meeting out here, Mr Jones?” he asked, and Jones crossed his arms.

“I don’t trust my coworkers. They think I’m some kind of crazy.”

Ryan exchanged a look with Shane - Shane looked like he was having fun, the bastard, and Ryan tried to will some patience into existence with a deep inhalation.

“Why do they think you’re crazy?” he asked, as neutrally as he could. Jones huffed and nodded towards the window of the cabin.

“Because I trust my own eyes, son. I know I seen things out there that weren’t no moose.”

“What about bears?” Ryan said, because he would be afraid of bears over a mythical beast any day.

“I know what a bear looks like,” Jones said. “This thing don’t move like a bear.”

“What does it move like?” Shane asked, all polite interest. Ryan wanted to punch him.

“It moves more like a human,” Jones said tiredly, like he’d gone over the matter countless times before. “Look, I bet you’re familiar with the lore. It checks all the boxes. What I want to know is what’s gotten it so bold that it comes near the city to start killing people.”

“Excellent question,” Shane said, but he was inspecting the one-room cabin, the stone fireplace and the antlers that decorated the wall above, and it didn’t look like he was duly concerned by the question at all.

“If we were dealing with an actual beast,” Ryan said slowly, hanging onto his professionalism by his metaphorical fingernails at this point. “What would make an animal move into new territory like this?”

“Desperation,” Jones said. “Lack of food, losing territory - but this is no animal, Agent Bergara. It tore a man’s arm clean off.”


	8. Episode 4, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Careful what you wish for.

It was late afternoon by the time Jones brought them outside to show the places where he had seen the creature in question. Ryan had several exasperated gripes ready to spill out of his mouth, but he had a feeling Shane wouldn’t listen to him so he swallowed them all, hunched his shoulders and followed him into the forest. There was something to be said for nature, however. Being surrounded by lush greenery, the sound of birds and the wind through the leaves, made Ryan’s anger recede a little, if not vanish entirely, even as dusk started to fall and a chill started to creep in. He might have moved in closer to Shane, but that had everything to do with the uneven path they were treading and nothing to do with the chill. He saw Shane shift beside him, turning towards him to say something.

All three of them heard the noise at the same time and they turned around as one.

“There!” Shane said and pointed. Ryan followed the line of his arm  towards a dark, undefinable shape between the trees a bit further down the path. A shiver went down his spine but that didn’t mean anything - as far as Ryan knew, it was a bear. Large, dark, hairy - it did move, it was alive, but Ryan couldn’t tell if it moved like a human or an animal. Jones, however, let out a scream and took off. Shane also started running, but in the opposite direction, towards the shape among the trees. It took Ryan a precious, shocked moment to take up the chase.

“Shane, no!” Ryan shouted, but it was no use. Shane was already a yard away, his long legs eating up the ground beneath his feet in a way that had Ryan struggling to shrink the distance between them.

A branch whipped Ryan in the face and he cursed, crouching down to rub at the smarting line across his cheek. He stumbled upright in the dense undergrowth when he heard Shane scream, and he found hitherto uncovered reserves of strength to run faster. He had never heard Shane scream before. Ryan swallowed down his beating heart and almost tripped over him where he lay on the forest floor, among brambles and white moss.

“We’ve gotta stop meeting like this,” Ryan said breathlessly and kneeled by Shane, who gave a weak laugh in response, so Ryan _should just calm the fuck down already, he was laughing, he was going to live._

“I’m fine,” Shane said, but it would have been a whole lot more convincing if he wasn’t lying flat on his back in the woods with - oh God - blood all down the front of his shirt, the fabric torn and jagged across a glistening wound on his left shoulder. “Guess it got me,” Shane added, angling his head to see it. “Oh. Hey. Would you look at that.”

His voice had turned reedy, and Ryan decisively pushed his head away by putting a finger to his chin. “Don’t look,” he said. “I’ll help you up and we’ll get you to the cabin. We can call an ambulance from there.”

It had to be a testament to the pain Shane was in that he didn’t argue or come up with any smartass commentary. Ryan slung his left arm around his waist and Shane put his right arm around his shoulders, and it was a lot less awkward than Ryan had feared it would be - he felt steady under Shane’s weight. Together they hobbled back, along the path of broken twigs and trampled bushes that they’d left behind, to the path proper, where it thankfully wasn’t far to the cabin.

* * *

It felt like an eternity, but logically, Ryan knew it couldn’t have taken more than maybe fifteen agonizing minutes before they stumbled across the threshold, and some paranoid voice at the back of Ryan’s head made him bolt the door behind them.

With a groan, Shane sat down on the bed by the far wall of the cabin, tucked in between the door to what Ryan assumed was the bathroom and a large bookshelf filled with all sorts of paraphernalia except books, which,  Ryan honestly didn’t know what to make of the purpose of this cabin. He doubted he’d ever get the chance to ask Billy Jones about it. He pulled at the blinds over the cabin’s only window, but the world outside was dark and quiet and Ryan let the blinds fall back in place.

A quick look around determined that the cabin held no phone at all however, and Ryan swore out loud. Shane only sighed and started to undress. Ryan shrugged out of his jacket and damp shirt easy as anything, but Shane was having difficulty removing his own blood-stained dress shirt; he’d managed to get the buttons open but he didn’t want to jostle his injury, so Ryan walked over to him, sank down on the bed beside him and gripped the collar of the shirt, gently easing it over Shane’s mauled shoulder. Shane inhaled sharply through his teeth as the fabric peeled off, and Ryan grimaced at the amount of blood that had seeped from the jagged edges of the wound.

“Sit tight,” he told Shane. “I’ll find the first aid kit to stop the bleeding and then I’ll drive you to the hospital.”

“Good plan,” Shane said lightly, but his voice was still thin, and Ryan saw that he was pale beneath the two-day beard that had sprung up on his jaw and upper lip.

He found the first aid kit in the bathroom, and considered moving the entire operation there. But then he considered attempting to fold Shane’s limbs into the confined space, never mind himself, and Ryan decided that they better stay put. He gave Shane a painkiller, and he watched him swallow it dry before he resumed his position on the bed beside him. Shane shifted to accommodate him so that they were pressed thigh to thigh, both of them angling their upper bodies against each other to allow Ryan easy access. The gentle heaving of Shane’s bare chest  against Ryan’s arm with each breath he took was somehow soothing as he set to work.

“Well, it didn’t take your arm clean off, that’s for certain,” Ryan said conversationally, after he’d managed to clean the wounds - three uneven scratches, starting just above Shane’s left shoulder blade and extending across his shoulder almost to his collarbone.

“I get that you’re trying to lighten the atmosphere,” Shane said, and Ryan felt the words as a puff of air against his forehead. “But I want you to know that I don’t think that’s funny.”

Ryan laughed as he discarded the antiseptic wipes, because Shane didn’t sound so close to fainting anymore. “This isn’t so bad, actually. They’re not very deep and they’ve stopped bleeding on their own” he said and pulled out another wipe started to gently clean off the blood that had run down Shane’s chest, pooling in the dip of his throat and crusting in his sparse chest hair.

“No, hey, I can do that,” Shane said and grabbed the antiseptic wipe from Ryan’s hand, his fingers briefly brushing over Ryan’s knuckles.

“Suit yourself,” Ryan said, to mask the weird tug in his stomach at Shane’s insistence. He shook his head a little and started to dig in the kit after compression material. When he looked back up, Shane was wiping the crease of his stomach and belly button, and the sight was so unexpected that Ryan wanted to laugh. He didn’t, but he still let out a noise somewhere between a cough and a sob. Shane looked up, his almond-shaped eyes wide in alarm. His eyebrows were arched high in a question Ryan didn’t know how to answer.

“You could have died,” Ryan said, and he saw Shane pull his thin lower lip between his teeth in uncharacteristic contemplation.

“You said it yourself. It’s not that bad,” Shane said then, voice gentle. Ryan’s eyes stung from tiredness and he pressed the back of his hand against them for a second.

“You still ran after fucking Bigfoot in the forest, Shane. I mean I get it, you want to be with your people, but-”

There was a loud burst of laughter from Shane, immediately followed by a grunt of pain. Ryan hurried to press the folded gauze in his hand against the wound, in lack of better compression material. Shane was frowning, but he didn’t make another noise, so Ryan fumbled after medical tape to secure his makeshift bandaging.

“You don’t even believe in that shit,” Ryan told him admonishingly. “So you don’t get to die from- from unexplained phenomena. You hear me? If you die, it’s gotta be from something mundane. Run over by a car.”

Another laugh, but this time softer, just a huff of air. Ryan couldn’t bear to meet Shane’s eyes, so he just lifted the roll of medical tape to his mouth to rip off a strip with his teeth. “Ryan,” Shane said, and there was a softness to his voice that made a lump form in Ryan’s throat. “It doesn’t matter as long as you’re fine.”

“What does that even mean?” Ryan asked, fastening the strip to Shane’s shoulder blade. He had several birthmarks littering his pale, slightly crooked back, and Ryan had to tear his eyes away to focus on the job at hand, tear off another strip, put it on. Shane breathed in deep enough to dislodge Ryan’s arm a little. He shifted on the bed.

“My brother disappeared when I was fifteen.”

Ryan said nothing, didn’t meet Shane’s eyes. He just put his hand on his arm, careful to avoid the bandage, encouraging. For him or for Shane, he wasn’t sure. “It was a kidnapping, probably,” Shane kept going, and his voice was steady if a little thin. “He wouldn’t have run from home, and most runaways return anyway. It... they never found his body, but he was declared presumed dead after a while.”

“I’m so sorry Shane,” Ryan found himself saying. His voice sounded foreign to his own ears, too husky to be his.

“They could never explain it,” Shane continued. “There were no leads, no... and I was at home, that night. I didn’t see anything useful. Nothing. And like...”

Here Shane broke off to breathe in again, and Ryan’s heart clenched at the sharpness of it, the evident effort to keep it together. “The worst part was not knowing. I thought it would have been better if they had found his body, and I _hated_ myself for thinking that.”

“Shane,” Ryan said and shifted again, sliding his hand down his arm. “That’s completely normal, that’s...”

“I know,” Shane said with a watery chuckle. “I went to therapy. I went to all those same psychology courses you did.”

Ryan’s hand came to rest just above the crook of Shane’s elbow.

“I just don’t want people to have to suffer through that. Having things left unsolved eats away at you,” he said and Ryan felt muscle and tendons shift under his palm as Shane gingerly lifted his left hand to rub at his own right arm. “You asked me why I do this, back when we first met. That’s why.”

Ryan pushed at Shane’s arm then, just a little, to angle him closer. Shane complied, and Ryan looked up at his face at the same time Shane turned his head to look at him. “That doesn’t explain you saying ‘as long as you’re fine’ though,” Ryan said, and again Shane chewed on his lower lip before he said:

“You mean it isn’t obvious?”

“No, not really,” Ryan said, even though his palm against Shane’s skin felt hot and there was a yawning notion opening up at the back of his mind that he barely dared skirt around. There was no way that Shane-

“I can’t stand the thought of losing you too, Ryan,” Shane said, and there was a hitch to his breath like it cost him dearly to say it. Ryan swallowed and moved his hand up, skipping over the bandage to land on Shane’s neck. Shane’s eyelashes fluttered in a blink, and at this distance Ryan could fully appreciate how they fanned over his cheeks like dust in a sunbeam. Their breaths mingled when Ryan opened his mouth.

“I don’t want to lose you either, dumbass,” Ryan said, but he thought the insult was mitigated by the way Shane sighed and tilted his head downward to meet Ryan in a kiss.

Ryan figured this had been a long time in the making, despite his complete obliviousness, because it felt natural in a way very few things in his life had ever felt. To open his mouth to the kiss and angle his face to grant Shane’s tongue access was easy and real and it sang through his entire body. Shane’s beard scraped over Ryan’s stubble as they both shifted to get closer to each other, and Ryan made a muffled noise into his mouth. Shane grabbed a hold of Ryan’s arm with his good hand, fingers trembling slightly on his skin. But the angle was awkward and Ryan broke off the kiss with a groan.

He looked up at Shane, at his open mouth and reddened lips, the way his eyes were huge and dark and scared, and made a decision. He would wipe that frightened look off Shane’s face forever if he could. Before Shane could protest, Ryan clambered on top of him, straddling his lap and bracketing his hips with his knees, and grabbed the back of his head with both hands to tilt his face upwards.

“I’m not going to lose you,” Ryan said, and he hadn’t even noticed how out of breath he was before the words came out all shaky. He felt Shane’s hands land on his hips, a touch that was too hesitant, so Ryan sealed his mouth over Shane’s in another kiss. Now it was his turn to pull Shane’s lower lip in between his teeth, and Ryan relished in the small groan Shane let out. Those hands on Ryan’s hips tightened their grip and Ryan smiled against Shane’s mouth

“Ryan,” Shane said and Ryan hummed, kept pressing kissed to Shane’s lips even as he spoke. “Ryan, are you sure about this?”

Ryan leaned away, hands still on Shane’s neck and curling his fingers against warm skin. “Are _you_ sure about this?”

“I asked you first,” Shane said, but a smile was tugging at his mouth, the mouth that Ryan had been _kissing_ and suddenly it was unbearable to not be kissing Shane right at this moment. But Ryan swallowed and tried to stay in control.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly, and there was that fear creeping back into Shane’s eyes. Ryan slid his hands up so he was cradling the back of Shane’s head and buried his fingers in his brown hair. “I don't know,” he repeated. “But I know I want to.”

The truth of his words struck him as he said them and Ryan couldn’t resist rolling his hips just a little. The contact was searing, the friction hot, and Shane groaned again as he put his forehead against Ryan’s shoulder.

“I didn’t think you would,” he heard Shane mumble into the collar of his t-shirt. His breath was damp and hot on Ryan’s skin and sent a shiver down his spine.

“Do _you_ want to?” Ryan asked, and he was aiming for playful but his wavering voice betrayed him. Shane lifted his head and his hands slid up from Ryan’s hips up between them, to cup Ryan’s face.

“Yeah, Ryan,” he said and his eyes were so dark in this cabin lit only by a single light bulb somewhere behind Ryan’s back. “God, how could I not?”

A small, incredulous laugh bubbled up in Ryan’s chest and he shifted in Shane’s lap - he was in Shane’s damn lap for fuck’s sake, and they were both very evidently into it. Ryan’s life had gone upside down in a matter of minutes. Shane had been injured by a fucking Bigfoot in a forest and now Ryan was in his lap. _Join the Bureau,_ Ryan thought somewhat hysterically. _See the sights, go on an adventure._

He had a million more questions fighting to get out, but it all sort of muted into a white noise when his eyes slipped from Shane’s eyes back down to his mouth and then to his naked chest, rising and falling with controlled breathing against Ryan’s own body. When it came to things like this, Ryan was better at doing than talking, so he put his mouth to the soft spot under Shane’s ear, where his jaw met his throat, and tasted salt on his skin, felt his beard prickle at his lips.

“Ryan,” Shane said again, but Ryan gently pushed at him until he got the message and scooted up the bed, carefully lying down on the covers so Ryan could crawl on top of him and they could kiss without either of them getting a crick in their neck. “I guess we’re really doing this, huh,” he continued, raking him up and down with his eyes when Ryan sat up to pull off his t-shirt.

“I mean unless you’d rather wait until we’re, I don’t know, at home, or-” Ryan said but Shane made a noise low in his throat and pulled Ryan back down to kiss him again. Shane wasted no time in getting his hands on Ryan’s naked back, and Ryan could feel his fingers span the entire breadth of his waist and gave an appreciative huff against Shane’s skin. He nosed up Shane’s neck to press a kiss to his cheek. “Does it hurt?” he asked. He felt Shane shift beneath him, his shoulder carefully placed on the cover and left hand still pressed to Ryan’s lower back.

“We’re good,” Shane said quietly, but it wasn’t a no. Ryan sat up with a frown. What he looked down on was Shane, all pale limbs and taut tendons, his hair tousled from where Ryan had run his fingers through it. His eyes were still wide but not in fear. He looked like he was drinking Ryan in, and Ryan felt a blush creep down his chest at the attention. “I have at least one completely functional hand, is what I’m saying,” Shane said, apparently realizing his silence was damning. He lifted his right hand to wiggle his fingers. Ryan snorted and ducked down, to hide his blush maybe.

It was maybe not the best idea, but it was like the floodgates had been opened, and Ryan didn’t want to stop. He unbuttoned Shane’s jeans - muddy and forest-smelling though they were - and pushed them down just enough to expose him, and Shane made a noise that Ryan didn’t know how to interpret. He paused for a second, but the blood was rushing in his ears, hot and insistent. Ryan had thought about doing this before, was the thing; falling to his knees in the showers after practice in college because he was a teenager and he’d had _thoughts_ and maybe even feelings, but in the end it had just always been easier to go out with the girls.

But now he had Shane right there in front of him, and fuck if it didn’t feel like he would die if he didn’t get his mouth on him right now. So Ryan put his mouth on him. Swallowed Shane down, heard the sound Shane made in the back of his throat, closed his eyes as tears threatened to pool at the corners.

“Ryan, you don’t- you don’t have to-” Shane tried to say, but he broke off on a gasp when Ryan pressed his tongue flat against the warm weight of his cock. Emboldened, Ryan started to move his head, carefully, experimentally, sounding out what made Shane groan, what made him bite off noises, what made him mutter soft curses under his breath. Ryan had to pull back a bit, draw in a breath through his nose, and then he felt Shane’s hand land on his head. Ryan looked up through his lashes, found Shane with his eyes firmly locked on him and felt a tug of heat low in his stomach. Then Shane pressed his palm against Ryan’s scalp, tangled his fingers in his hair, and Ryan moaned around him.

Shane closed his eyes and Ryan had to press his hips down into the mattress, chasing whatever friction he could get. He was uncomfortably hard, and when Shane gasped, “Ryan, I’m close,” Ryan only hummed and refused to move.

Having Shane come in his mouth felt like winning a match, and even though Ryan sputtered and coughed at the musky, slightly acid taste after swallowing, he was grinning brightly when Shane grasped the back of his neck to drag him up. “You goddamn menace,” Shane whispered, his voice gratifyingly hoarse as he shifted beneath Ryan to get both hands on his pants.

Ryan ended up hunched on top of Shane with his arms on either side of his head, panting heavily into the meat of his right shoulder as Shane used his fully functional right hand to get him off. He hadn’t ever imagined this would happen, but if he had, he wouldn’t have picked a cabin out in the forest after a Bigfoot attack. But life had a way, Ryan supposed, and when he curved his back to muffle a moan against Shane’s chest as he came in his hand, he figured he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

“Good thing we got those antiseptic wipes, huh?” Ryan panted as he rolled to the side, using Shane’s uninjured shoulder as a pillow and settling down on the bed.

“Jesus Christ,” Shane laughed and wiped his hand vindictively on Ryan’s back. Ryan yelped and curled up, but his attempts to get away were half-hearted at best. He was lax with post-orgasm euphoria, his body yielding easily when Shane pushed at him to arrange their limbs comfortably.

“Guess we should get you to a hospital anyway,” Ryan yawned and burrowed a little closer. “Just to make sure you don’t need stitches.”

“I guess so,” Shane said, and Ryan felt his fingers trace a pattern on his naked shoulder. “You’re driving though.”


	9. Episode 5, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything’s sunshine and roses.

The world had closed in fast around them after they’d emerged from the cabin in the woods, but that didn’t stop Ryan from walking into the office the following week not exactly with a spring in his step, but maybe with a twinkle in his eye.

Shane usually gave him a conspiratorial wink when they passed each other in the corridors. When they were alone in their office, and Shane sat perched on his desk reading something, Ryan tended to slide in between his legs and kiss him. Shane tolerated this treatment, usually kissing him back for a beat before angling his body away, complaining theatrically about his healing shoulder. Ryan would then huff and walk away, both of them resuming work until Shane edged over to perch himself on Ryan’s desk instead. Ryan was always careful to hide his smile, but the atmosphere between them was undeniably positive, almost giddy.

Somehow, it seemed to work. They still went out for a drink after work sometimes, they still called each other sometimes. They still worked cases together. The only thing that changed, really, was that sometimes after that drink, Ryan walked Shane home and then followed him inside and into his bed. Sometimes the call ended with Ryan telling Shane he’d come over. Sometimes, while they worked a case, Ryan would groan in frustration, and Shane would rub his shoulder, a little awkwardly, but mostly reassuringly. It worked, and Ryan didn’t think he was allowed to ask for more. But, what the hell, he’d never been good at not doing what he wasn’t supposed to.

* * *

When Shane’s shoulder was fully healed, Ryan decided it wouldn’t be cheesy to celebrate. He decided against the  ‘You Survived Bigfoot’ banner, but on Friday he did cook dinner from scratch, and he bought a bottle of white wine that cost about three times what he usually paid for a bottle of anything. Shane took in the tableau with the same attitude of pleasant surprise that he reserved for seeing dogs in the street, or when a case they’d been working on for ages seemed to reach a natural conclusion without their interference. Ryan decided it was a good thing. He’d been a little nervous about the tealight candles he’d placed on the table; homemade pasta was already bordering on too much, and it was a relief that Shane didn’t make a big deal about it.

“This is really good,” Shane said around a mouthful of pasta sauce, and Ryan had to fight not to be visibly pleased. They finished the pasta, and they brought the bottle with them into the living room where Shane had saved Ryan’s life, but Ryan didn’t think about that when Shane put his hand on the side of his face to kiss him.

By now, Shane knew all the little things that made Ryan’s breath hitch - he used teeth in the kiss, and Ryan gasped when he slid his hand up the side of his face to  bury fingers in his hair. His other hand settled on Ryan’s hip, delightfully proprietary. Ryan shifted, and effectively straddled Shane’s lap to deepen the kiss. Shane’s mouth was so soft, and even though his body was all odd angles it was comfortable to press into, amazing for finding the perfect way to slot together. Shane made a small noise at the back of his throat and angled his face away to breathe against Ryan’s neck.

“I’m surprised you didn’t put on any mood music,” he murmured, the words a warm vibration against Ryan’s skin. “I’ve been expecting strewn out rose petals to appear any second.”

Ryan grinned and shifted again, twisting his back and turning away like he was about to slip off Shane’s lap.

“I mean I can put on some Billy Joel if you like,” he said thoughtfully, and Shane’s grip on his hip tightened. Ryan turned back, put his hands on Shane’s shoulders and looked him in the eyes. “And who knows about the rose petals. You haven’t seen my bedroom yet.”

Shane honest to god _growled_ and pulled Ryan back in to kiss him on the mouth. Ryan went willingly, smiling against Shane’s lips, and when he did slip off his lap, it was to take him by his hand and lead him into the bedroom. It was somewhere around there it all started to go to shit, Ryan figured later, when the entire weekend went by without Shane calling him, and really, the ball was firmly in Shane’s court.

Ryan wasn’t going to beg, not after _that._ He had some pride, after all.

* * *

The following Monday, however, Ryan walked into the Hoover building, nodded to all his colleagues, and took the elevator down to the cellar. In his hands he had two cups of coffee - sugar in one, milk in the other. An olive branch couldn’t hurt, he figured. He walked past the familiar peeling green wallpaper and the fluorescent light on the ceiling that flickered irregularly, and noticed that the door was slightly ajar. Ryan pushed it open with his hip and entered with a big grin on his lips.

“Good morning, Madej!” he said brightly, and then he realized the office was empty.

Slightly uneasy, Ryan set the coffee with milk down on Shane’s desk - it looked like it always did, papers strewn all over, a slightly chewed pencil left atop a binder. Ryan skimmed the contents of the binder quickly as he absent-mindedly sipped his own, sweet coffee, but it didn’t contain anything interesting so he set it back down. “He’s probably in a meeting,” Ryan muttered to himself, angry that he’d be so out of sorts just because Shane wasn’t in their office. He sat down behind his own desk and tried to tackle some paperwork.

The ticking of the clock on the wall seemed to get louder with every second, but Ryan had drunk all of his coffee and started to peel the foam cover to bits before he couldn’t take it anymore. He threw the takeaway cup into the trash can by the door - he _was_ a regular Michael Jordan, thanks very much Shane - and got up to snatch the other takeaway cup from Shane’s desk before he walked out the door and back the corridor to take the elevator back up. The elevator doors dinged open on the ground floor to the impeccably made up face of Kelsey, her red mouth forming a perfect o as Ryan stepped out.

“Ryan! I was just coming to get you, it seems like the phone in your office doesn’t work,” she said, and Ryan started. Maybe Shane had tried to call him and tell him where he was and only reached a disconnected phone. A belated pang in his stomach was the realization that he hadn’t spared Kelsey another thought since he’d dropped her off to drive back up to Maryland, to Shane and everything else that had followed.

“Oh, I’m sorry Kelsey,” Ryan said, momentarily off-kilter. “What was it you wanted?”

“Not me,” Kelsey hurried to say, and Ryan frowned. “Director Bennett wants to see you ASAP.”

“ASAP, huh,” Ryan said, trying for levity. “Sounds serious.”

Kelsey didn’t laugh. She didn’t even grace Ryan with a smile, she just tightened her mouth and nodded before turning on her heel to march off. The feeling of uneasiness that had made a home in Ryan’s stomach seemed to grow, and he didn’t know whether to drag his feet or hurry over to Bennett’s office. But arrive at his office he did, and Ryan didn’t greet the secretary before knocking at the door. He heard a muffled, “Come in,” and entered, still clutching the coffee in his hand.

Bennett seemed drawn and serious, but then, he usually did. Ryan took a seat opposite him as he was bid, and he crossed his legs in an attempt to seem at home. Bennett stapled his fingers and leaned his forehead against them briefly, sighing quietly.

“Do you know the whereabouts of Special Agent Madej?” he said and looked up.

A cold vise of terror gripped Ryan’s heart immediately. His leg slipped off his knee and he straightened up so quickly that it was only the lid that stopped the coffee from sloshing all over Bennett’s carpeting.

“Has he gone missing?” were the shaky words out of Ryan’s mouth, and he was shocked that he managed as much.

“We were just informed of his location,” Bennett said, and Ryan would have sagged with relief if not for the odd tone of Bennett’s voice. He sighed again and put his hands flat on his desk. “Madej is in Indiana. He’s been arrested by military police and is held at an air base there.”

Ryan pressed his lips together, his mind going a mile a minute but banging into walls no matter where he turned, grinding to a painful halt time and time again. _When did he go? What did he do? Why_ didn’t he tell me? _Why-_

“Go get him out of there, Bergara,” Bennett interrupted Ryan’s runaway train of thought. “You need to be more careful than this. We can’t protect you.”

Ryan swallowed and nodded. Bennett didn’t look away, and Ryan felt rooted to the spot. “Understand that we will have to shut down your department if you don’t keep him in check.”

“Yes sir,” Ryan managed to force out. He was holding the cup of coffee so tightly that the lid was starting to buckle, a drop edging its way downward along the cup seam. He kept his eyes trained on that drop while Bennett relayed everything he knew about the situation. When he got out of the office, Ryan gathered all his things like in a dream, and it was only when tried to open his car door that he realized that he was still holding that stupid cup  of coffee, clinging to it like it was a lifeline.

He left it on the curb.

* * *

Traveling wasn’t great for Ryan’s state of mind. His thoughts ran rampant, and no matter how much he tried to distract himself, they kept hounding him. _Why didn’t Shane tell me? Why did he leave without me? Did I really fuck it up_ this _bad?_

Ryan drummed his fingers against the armrest of his seat on the plane, like he could will the trip to be shorter. He knew that whatever was going on between him and Shane wasn’t durable - how could it be? But he had hoped it would last longer, that Shane would at least _tell him-_ but then again, Ryan was just so damn relieved that Shane was alive, arrested or not, that he couldn’t be mad.

It would all work out when he got Shane out of fucking Indiana. Unsolved Cases, everything Shane had worked for, everything _Ryan_ had worked for would be fine. Ryan tightened his grip on the armrest and stared resolutely out the window.

* * *

It was an eternity and a half before Ryan was allowed in the cell. The door opened for him and he stepped inside, and there Shane was. He was curled up on the bunk with one leg hanging almost entirely off it, one arm bent under his head and fast asleep. The door closed behind Ryan with a clang. Shane’s eyes blinked open and Ryan’s heart constricted when he untangled from his position and sat up, blinking blearily at him.

“I don’t know how you can sleep like that,” Ryan said, to mask the heartache of seeing Shane like this - his hair stood out in impossible angles, there was a crease on his cheek and he probably hadn’t shaved since Friday morning. Ryan had wanted to see Shane wake up, but not like this.

“You know me,” Shane said and stretched his arms so that his spine popped. “I can sleep anywhere.”

 _Anywhere but in my bed,_ Ryan thought uncharitably, but he pushed the notion away to say, “This isn’t a joke, Shane.”

“I know it’s not,” he said, gripping the edge of the bed and meeting Ryan’s gaze. Shane’s eyes were ringed with dark shadows, and he might be able to sleep anywhere but he hadn’t done it for long. Ryan didn’t know if he wanted to punch him or hug him. “Ryan, they’re saying it’s a train derailment, toxic spill. But there’s no train tracks even close to the site.”

“It’s a downed hostile aircraft,” Ryan said, automatically lowering his voice and taking a step closer. “They’ve detected radiation, so to avoid mass panic-”

Shane threw his head back to laugh. Ryan snapped his mouth shut breathed out his nose. “They’ve ordered a full inquiry into the Unsolved Cases department,” he said, and that at least brought Shane up short. “They might shut us down.”

“You can’t believe this story they’re trying to pull,” Shane said and got to his feet, and God, Ryan had forgotten the way he towered over him, resented the way he had to crane his neck to maintain eye contact.

“This is highly classified,” Ryan hissed and crossed his arms. “What were you doing, sneaking around a military restricted accident site?”

“A highly classified lie, maybe!” Shane said and put his hands on Ryan’s arms. “Ryan, they’re looking for someone out there.”

“The pilot of the aircraft, probably,” Ryan said. He felt Shane’s fingers curl in a little, but he didn’t budge.

“I saw the wreck, and no pilot walked away from that,” Shane said, and there was such a conviction in his voce that Ryan felt his resolve waver. He uncrossed his arms, gently touching one hand to Shane’s elbow.

“I can’t believe you’re the one propagating the conspiracy theories here, Madej,” he said. Shane’s eyes flickered down with that, and slid his hands off Ryan’s arms as he straightened up.

“The same man who warned me about Illinois approached me again,” he said and again a cold hand squeezed Ryan’s heart. “He tipped me off about this.”

“Why didn’t you-” Ryan started. _Why didn’t you open an official investigation. Why didn’t you tell me. Why wouldn’t you tell me._ He cleared his throat, and Shane flicked his eyes back up.

“Ryan, I know there’s more to this case.”

“Okay fine,” Ryan said and threw out his hands. “We have until tomorrow afternoon to get back to DC for the hearing. Let’s get you out of here.”

* * *

“I can’t believe you believe in UFOs now.”

“What’s there to believe? All it has to be is unidentified and flying, Ryan. I’m not saying we’re dealing with something extra-terrestrial here,” Shane said, throwing Ryan a look like he was the one that was insane. “Technically, if you come across a bat that you don’t realize is a bat, that’s an unidentified flying object.”

“You do believe this isn’t a regular hostile military aircraft,” Ryan pointed out, almost gleefully taking in Shane’s rant. “What else could it be?”

Shane only gave an exasperated huff in response, and Ryan grinned even though Shane wasn’t looking at him; he was looking at the hospital before them. After Shane had been released, he’d shown Ryan what he was going off of - a small local newspaper citing a call for medical evacuation of a sheriff deputy. The article mentioned no further details, and Ryan was kind of skeptical, to be honest. It wasn’t a lot to go on.

But Shane marched in the doors of the hospital, determined to get to the bottom of the case, and Ryan trailed after him. Of course he did. The doctor they spoke to wasn’t very helpful - without a subpoena, they couldn’t get very far, and Ryan was very aware that they were completely on their own and on thin ice. Shane seemed aware, too - he was more terse than usual, frowning and using his height in a way Ryan wasn’t used to seeing, like he wanted to intimidate the doctor, who frowned back at him over the rim of her glasses.

“Listen,” Ryan said, putting a hand on Shane’s arm and turning towards the doctor, leaning closer. “We respect your patient confidentiality, but from what we understand, a man is dead.”

The doctor stretched her mouth into a thin line, but Ryan pressed on. “We want to see justice served, just as much as you.”

Her eyes flickered to the side, and then she leaned in too. “They brought him in with five degree burns over eighty percent of his body. As soon as we pronounced him dead, they took his corpse away. No examination, no pathology, just - gone,” she explained, quickly and in a hushed tone. She straightened up and added, “But you didn’t hear it from me.”

“Of course not,” Ryan assured her, but she was already walking away, ponytail bouncing with every step.

“I hate it when you do that,” Shane muttered and turned on his heel, leaving Ryan floundering.

“Wait, what do you mean, when I do what?” he demanded, half a step behind Shane out the door of the hospital.

“Nothing,” Shane said, but the frustration was evident in his tone of voice, and Ryan put his hand on his arm again. Shane finally turned towards him, but it seemed too much to ask to get him to look him in the eye. Ryan gritted his teeth before he said:

“Extensive burns could be consistent with radiation from a cracked nuclear warhead, which is what the, may I remind you, _highly classified report_ states.”

“One person!” Shane said, throwing out his arms and dislodging Ryan’s hand. “There is no way to keep something like that contained - that hospital should be full of people with radiation poisoning in that case! The entire clean up crew would need to be treated.”

“Okay, so what the hell are you suggesting then?” Ryan said and crossed his arms.

“I don’t know! That’s what I’m trying to find out!” Shane said and turned away. He put his hands to his hips and looked at some point on the horizon that Ryan didn’t care to find.

“Tell me what it is I do that you hate,” Ryan said. He had to lower his voice so it wouldn’t break. Shane’s entire frame heaved with a sigh, starting somewhere around his waist and making him crane his neck so he was looking up into the sky. He didn’t look at Ryan when he finally said:

“It’s so easy for you, to just handle people. Get them to do what you want. You don’t even notice it.”

Ryan blinked, taken aback so much that it took him a second to follow him when Shane started to walk towards his rental car. Ryan wanted to keep talking, but he genuinely didn’t know where to start, or even figure out what it was he wanted to know. So he just quietly slid into the passenger seat, while Shane started the car and put it in reverse to get them out of the parking lot of the hospital.

* * *

“How come I never had to walk around in the woods in the middle of the night until I met you?” Ryan asked and swung his flashlight so that it painted a target on Shane’s back. He wasn’t wearing his FBI wind jacket like Ryan - he was in his jean jacket that underscored how slim his waist was and broadened his shoulders in a way that normally made Ryan want to take it off.

Right now Ryan wanted to reach out and pull it up over his head to trap his arms and then laugh as he struggled. He'd never claimed to be very mature about dealing with his emotions.

“What can I say, I know how to treat a guy right,” Shane said, and he was using his sarcastic voice which made Ryan want to hit him over the head, if he could reach that high. Maybe a tackle instead, he mused as he trampled after him in the undergrowth. Tall guys had a fucked up center of gravity. Ryan could definitely take him.

“I just, I don’t think trespassing on a federally quarantined area is going to do us any favors in the hearing tomorrow,” Ryan said, and he really thought Shane would have cared more about that, but Ryan was starting to realize that maybe he didn’t know Shane at all.

“If they catch us, that hearing is the least of our troubles,” Shane said, like that wasn’t exactly what Ryan was trying not to think about.

“Please tell me you have a plan other than ‘let’s walk onto a presumed nuclear accident site and see what happens’ because, personally, I would like to not die.” Ryan hissed. It was easier for him to loudly berate Shane instead of dealing with the steadily growing pit of terror in his stomach at the thought of going against the US military armed with one gun and a flashlight.

“You’re not going to die, Ryan,” Shane said. “I just want to see what it is they’re trying to do. You _know_ that the nuclear warhead story is a load of bullshit.”

Ryan did have to admit that his conspiracy senses were tingling, but the fact of the matter remained; they were going toe to toe with the US air force, and possibly also aliens.

“Okay, I think we’re coming up on the site now,” Shane whispered and clicked off his flashlight, gripping Ryan’s arm to signal he do the same.

“You _think,_ ” Ryan muttered murderously, but shut off his flashlight all the same and pressed a little closer to Shane. Old habits die hard. Together they crept up a slope and laid down flat on the crest to peer down into a valley, where a whole patrol of people worked around a wreck that didn’t smolder anymore but still the air above it seemed to shimmer.

With a start, Ryan realized that it wasn’t a valley - it was a crater. The ground was overturned, exposing mounds of black earth. Shane and Ryan were lying among splintered wood, and Ryan could see that the trees circumventing the crater were angled away from it.

“Well, it’s no derailed train car,” Ryan whispered, eyes fixed on the black metal twisted into improbable shapes by an impact beyond imagination, eerie shadows cast by the lights of the crew around it.

“Doesn’t look much like a nuclear warhead jet either,” Shane said. “What are they doing - scavenging for parts?”

It sure looked like it, Ryan thought. The people swarming like ants around it, poking and prodding and in some cases even climbing. Ryan’s fingers itched with wanting to touch it, even while his skin crawled at the sight. “Dude, this is so weird,” he said and for once Shane didn’t deride him.

“Yeah,” he breathed after a second, and both of them stayed still, watching the wreckage for a long time.

They tried in vain to make out what they were saying down in the crater until a group detached from the wreckage and as luck would have it, they gathered not far from Ryan and Shane’s hidden position.

“It’s not in there,” one of them said. “We need to double our efforts.”

“We’re at maximum capacity,” another said. “We have teams all over these woods, searching.”

Ryan and Shane exchanged a look then, and Ryan became acutely aware of how uncomfortable the ground was beneath him, and how long it would take him to crawl to his feet from this position. Without a word, both of them started inching backwards, back in among the trees and away from the crater. Every rustle of their movements grated on Ryan’s nerves, but before long they were well out of sight of the site itself, and together they got up and started to pick their way back through the forest.

Neither of them lit their flashlight, and Ryan thought that there was a certain edge to their breathing - not panicked, but maybe desperate - as they walked, forced to a slow pace due to the darkness and terrain. Just when Ryan started to believe they might get away with it, he caught a flash of light in the corner of his eye. The trees swallowed up a lot of sound, but he still didn’t want to call out to Shane, who had somehow ended up just a few steps ahead of him.

It turned out that the trees swallowed up enough sound that a search patrol practically stumbled upon them. It was pure instinct on Ryan’s part, something that went against the fear of the armed men surrounding them - he placed his feet in a broad stance and swung the flashlight, hip first and then arm, wrist straight. Just like Shane had taught him. He hit the closest man square in the head with a nasty, resounding thud, and yelled as loud as he could:

“Shane, run!”


	10. Episode 5, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> About UV radiation, and thorns.

There had been no rose petals in Ryan’s bedroom that Friday. Ryan had inelegantly fallen back onto his bed and unceremoniously pulled Shane on top of him.

They were well past rituals at this point, Ryan figured, and started to pull at Shane’s nice, white shirt immediately, working his way down button by button while eagerly canting his legs open, allowing Shane to settle between them. They weren’t in a hurry though. Ryan wasn’t used to it, to taking their time in undressing each other. But it was delightful to see Shane revealed like this, his pale chest exposed inch by inch, becoming undone by degrees. He kept ducking down to kiss Ryan, like he didn’t want him to look. But Ryan wanted to look, and at some point, when they were both naked and had been kissing for long enough that both of them were going to suffer severe beard burn come morning, Ryan scooted up the bed a little bit and cupped Shane’s face in his hands.

Shane blinked at him, his eyes dark and just a little unfocused. There was a blush coloring his cheeks and his thin lips were bitten red, and it took considerable effort on Ryan’s part to keep from kissing him long enough to say, “Fuck me.”

They’d been moving against each other the entire time, languid and experimental, but at his words, Shane pushed himself up on his arms and stilled completely.

“Are you-” he started, and had to pause to clear his throat. Ryan waited patiently, slid his hands down from Shane’s face across his broad shoulders to squeeze his arms.

“Yes,” Ryan said, when Shane didn’t seem to be able to finish the sentence. “God, Shane, what do I have to do to convince you that I really like having sex with you?”

Shane laughed, but he also looked down and sucked in a breath. “Anything you like, Ryan,” he said quietly. “Of course.”

The words tugged at Ryan’s gut, hot and urgent, and he rolled to the side, still caged in by Shane’s arms, to rummage in the drawer of his bedside table. Shane just watched, with eyes large and mouth slightly open, as Ryan uncapped the bottle of lube with one hand and flicked the condom at him with the other.

“Come on, big guy,” Ryan prompted gently even as he slid his hand down between his own legs, and Shane bit his lip.

“Don’t- don’t call me that while we’re in bed,” he said, voice drawn like it pained him. Ryan laughed, and Shane grinned even as he opened the packet and, very carefully, rolled the condom on.

Ryan wished he could pay more attention to Shane, but he was kind of lost in the sensation of stretching himself open and - okay, Ryan had always liked a bit of assplay, he wasn’t a total stranger to anal sex, but the entire concept of _having Shane inside him_ was a little daunting and Ryan had to close his eyes and concentrate on the small hum of pleasure somewhere low in his stomach so he wouldn’t freak out. He didn’t realize he was frowning until he felt Shane press the gentlest of kisses to the crease between his eyebrows. Ryan opened his eyes, felt like his gaze had to be wild and unfocused when he tried to fix Shane with a look.

“Okay?” Shane whispered and Ryan made a breathless noise, too far gone to make sense of the word, and when he felt one of Shane’s fingers join his own he had to clench his mouth shut to keep from moaning. Shane crooked his finger, and Ryan thought that maybe you could spontaneously combust from feeling too much. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple.

“Okay,” he echoed after a second, or perhaps an eternity. “Okay, Shane, just-”

Ryan squirmed, pulled their hands away and rolled over on his stomach, to hitch his hips up. He buried his face in his arms, concentrated on breathing.

“Are you sure?” Shane said, his voice breaking just a little on the last word. Ryan clenched his hands in his sheets and said:

“Just fuck me, Shane.”

He felt Shane’s hands settle on his hips, unsure and too gentle. Ryan flexed his legs, had to fight to stay still because all of him itched with a restless want that he didn’t know what to do with. When Shane pushed inside, it was a torturously slow drag against sensitized skin, and Ryan didn’t know whether to push back instantly or buck away, just so he could breathe. He stayed still, gritted his teeth and pressed his lower arms and calves to the bed. After an eternity, or maybe just a second, Ryan felt Shane’s hand brace itself beside his head. Ryan scrabbled wildly, untangling his crossed arms to grab Shane’s wrist.

“Is this- Can I,” Shane breathed against Ryan’s back, mouth pressed against his shoulder blade.

“Ngh,” Ryan said and turned his head to the side. “Move. Slowly.”

And Shane did, a measured roll of his hips that had Ryan tightening his grip on his wrist so much he imagined he could hear the bones crunch. Shane didn’t complain. He only breathed out against Ryan’s back and did it again, and Ryan made a noise then; just a short, breathless gasp that was forced out of him.

“We can- I can stop,” Shane said, and that had Ryan twist his head further where he lay, releasing Shane’s wrist to pull his face closer and press a messy, misaligned kiss to his mouth. The move shifted something between them, sent a spark of pleasure up Ryan’s spine, and he moaned into Shane’s mouth.

From there on out it blurred into a sweat-slick haze of movement, muffled moans and aborted gasps. When Shane shifted his weight to get a hand on him, Ryan was already too far gone - heat pooled in his stomach and he came all over Shane’s hand, biting into his own forearm to muffle his shout.

“Keep going,” Ryan slurred, when Shane stilled against him. Shane let out a half-strangled groan, gripped Ryan’s hip with one hand and started moving again. All of the tension had bled out of Ryan with his climax and he enjoyed the sensation in a lazy, distant sort of way; the way his body moved with every push of Shane’s hips. “Feels good,” Ryan mumbled, turning his head again so his cheek was resting against his forearm.

“Fuck,” Shane said, and came. He arched above Ryan, his entire body trembling with his orgasm, before he slumped down on top of him, breathing heavily. Ryan had never experienced such a comfortable weight in his life, and he stretched languorously under it, relishing in the bone-deep satisfaction of being fully relaxed and pinned to the bed.

Shane made a noise against his neck then and pulled out, leaving Ryan feeling oddly bereft as he rolled over onto his back and out of the wet spot. Shane sat back on his haunches to discard the condom, but Ryan used the very last of his strength to reach up and pull him back down on top of him.

“Oomph,” Shane joked and settled down, arranging his ridiculously long limbs comfortably around Ryan, who sighed contentedly and put his arms around him.

“So,” Ryan said conversationally, when he’d gotten his breathing back under control. “That was pretty great.”

Shane huffed a laugh against Ryan’s cheek and lifted his head up just enough to kiss him. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Hey, let me just go wash up a little.”

Ryan only hummed in response, and he let the fatigue stop him from petulantly clinging to Shane when he disentangled himself. He figured he must have dozed off in the residual heat of their bodies, because when he blinked his eyes open, Shane was sitting on the bedside, a hand resting on the cover, between their bodies.

“Come to bed,” Ryan said, and started to sit up to wrangle himself and Shane under the covers. But Shane didn’t move, and when Ryan looked over he realized he had dressed himself, all but the top button of his shirt already neatly buttoned back up.

“I think I need to go,” Shane said, carefully. He didn’t look Ryan in the eye; he had his gaze firmly on his own hand on the bed, and Ryan dropped his gaze to it too.

“Oh,” said Ryan, and it was difficult to parse the leaden weight that his stomach had turned into. “Okay.”

Shane curled his fingers, and it seemed like he wanted to say something more. But he just sighed and smiled and finally looked up at Ryan. “See you Monday, all right?”

“Yeah, of course,” Ryan said, and felt the mattress shift underneath him as Shane got up. Ryan didn’t walk him to the door. He sat on his bed and watched Shane walk out, heard the rustling as he shrugged on his coat, and imagined he could feel a cold draft from the outside when the outer door opened.

He definitely heard the door slam shut, and for a moment Ryan wondered if he would ever see Shane again.

* * *

They’d been doomed from the moment the patrol happened upon them. There was only so much two guys with flashlights could do against the US military, especially when neither of them wanted to use their guns. Ryan was unceremoniously handcuffed and almost hefted off the ground as he was dragged along by two men in Kevlar vests. Later, he first caught a glimpse of Shane’s tousled hair before they were forced into a van, and Ryan felt his heart jump at the sight. He wasn’t dead, but on the other hand, he wasn’t free either.

There was a very special kind of paralyzing terror to the thought that maybe the both of them were about to disappear off the face of the earth, and literally no one would know to miss them until that hearing in DC the following day, and anyway, who knew how far up this went - maybe they would both just end up an unsolved case themselves, gathering dust in a cellar. Ryan idly tried to get out of his handcuffs without expecting to succeed, shifting restlessly on his seat. Opposite him, Shane sat still with his head leaned against the side of the van, eyes closed.

“My parents deserve better,” Ryan said, when the panic tried to claw its way out of his throat. “I can’t just disappear without a trace.”

A moment too late, Ryan realized that his words would maybe hit Shane harder than he had intended. He was just about to apologize when Shane sighed and opened his eyes. “You weren’t supposed to be here,” he said, and the apology died on Ryan’s tongue. Shane blinked, his large eyes black in the dimly lit back of a military van, and Ryan’s fear was replaced by anger so white-hot that it seemed to crawl over his skin.

“You absolute jackass,” he said through his teeth, and he could see that Shane was surprised by it. “You fuck off without telling me - you didn’t even call me back after-”

The words failed him so suddenly that he had to swallow before he continued, even though his eyes prickled. Ryan closed them because he wasn’t going to fucking cry. Not now, not here. “And now you have the gall to tell me that I’m not supposed to be here, with you, trying to do the right thing.”

There was a beat of silence, where Ryan was too aware of his own breathing, how it echoed in the confined space, and then - “Ryan,” Shane said, so softly that Ryan wasn’t entirely sure he didn’t imagine it. It made him open his eyes and look at him. He was leaning forwards, elbows on his knees and cuffed hands clasped together. Ryan thought he saw something almost desperate in the slant of his mouth.

“I thought I’d- I thought you knew how much you mean to me,” Shane said and Ryan wanted to argue, but his thoughts wouldn’t assemble fast enough to interject before Shane went on, “I know that Unsolved Cases is on thin ice - they’re looking for a reason to shut us down. I thought that if I- if you didn’t come with me on this wild goose chase, then at least your reputation would make it out of this unscathed.”

“My reputation,” Ryan repeated, nonsensically. Shane nodded, looked down on his hands and smiled ruefully.

“I know how much it means to you. I didn’t want to-”

The van came to a halt so abruptly that the both of them were thrown forward, tumbling sideways. Ryan’s elbow hit the bench hard enough to shoot spikes up his arm. Before either of them could say anything, the doors were thrown open, and the inside of the van flooded with light so bright that both of them had to squint.

As they were dragged away, all Ryan could think about was how he’d never gotten the chance to tell Shane that he loved him.

* * *

They weren’t made to disappear off the face of the earth after all.

They were both interrogated in turn, by stern, uniformed men, and Ryan could flash his FBI badge and tell them that they were expected back in DC later today. The uniformed men weren’t particularly impressed, but they held a quick, muttered discussion between them and before long, both Shane and Ryan were put on a plane back home with a promise that their superiors would hear about them violating a federally restricted area.

“Well, that could have gone better,” Shane said, after the plane had taken off, and all of Ryan’s determination to tell Shane if only they made it out alive had evaporated.

“Gee, you think?” Ryan said and crossed his arms, closed his eyes and leaned his head back. He wanted to get some sleep, or at least pretend to get some sleep. Maybe he could fool his body into being well rested for the most important hearing of his life, probably.

God, he hated his life.

Ryan was called into the hearing first. He stood up and tried to straighten his tie, but his hands were trembling too much. Shane stood up too, and without asking he batted Ryan’s hands away and straightened his tie for him, eyes carefully downcast.

“Can’t you hear it?” Shane said, and Ryan had to swallow before replying:

“What?”

Shane’s eyes flicked up, and they were dancing with mischief. His mouth was twisted into a grin that lit up his features. “They’re building the gallows out in the town square for us already.”

“You’re impossible,” Ryan said, but he was grinning too, helplessly. He shook his head and moved to turn away when Shane put his hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t let them slip the noose around your neck,” he said, and one day Ryan would have a talk with him about morbid similes. “Honestly, Ryan, you can get out of this one, but I’ve been headed here for a while. Don’t try to defend me.”

They held gazes for a moment, Ryan once again at a complete loss for words. It seemed to happen a lot around Shane, these days. He found them at last, however, and Ryan smiled and patted Shane’s elbow, resisting the urge to reach up on his tiptoes to kiss him on the mouth. “I’ll be fine, big guy. Don’t worry about me.”

Ryan walked into the room, and took his assigned seat. The room was murky, the blinds drawn, and someone had been smoking just before Ryan entered; he could smell it, and the air was hazy near the ceiling. He was facing Director Bennett and the panel of committee members selected for the inquiry, and from the get go, Ryan understood that Shane had been right. They weren’t interested in the work they had done for Unsolved Cases, and it was clear from their barbed comments and propensity to interrupt Ryan at every possible turn that they were looking for excuses. Ryan wished his throat wasn’t so dry, flared his nostrils at the acrid smell of nicotine, but he clenched his fists on his knees so he wouldn’t fiddle with his tie or cuffs at least.

“Agent Bergara, to the best of your knowledge, was Agent Madej ever assigned to investigate matters related to the aforementioned incident in Indiana?” one of the committee members asked, a woman with a wrinkle between her eyebrows so deep it looked painted on.

“No, ma’am,” Ryan said, truthfully. His shirt collar itched, but he refused to tug at it.

“Thank you, that will be all, Agent Bergara,” Director Bennett said, and he at least had the decency to look embarrassed at this show trial.

“Permission to make a statement, sir,” Ryan said and straightened up, flattening his damp palms over his thighs. They were going to hang Shane out to dry, and it was _wrong._

“Request denied, Agent,” the woman said without even looking at him and Ryan had to suck in air between his teeth to keep from saying something he would regret.

“Ma’am, it’s unfair to judge Madej after-” he started, but the woman looked up then and interrupted him sharply.

“You’re dismissed. Thank you Agent Bergara.”

It was a strange kind of freedom, Ryan thought when he got up. He thought he’d be upset, scared of losing his job and everything he’d worked toward. But as he exited the hearing and saw Shane’s head snap up where he was sitting on the bench, his tie crooked and his hair mussed, Ryan realized he didn’t regret one thing.

* * *

* * *

“You failed to get proper authorization for your investigation and furthermore, you exposed both you and your partner to possible toxic contamination.”

“Oh, so we’re back to that story?” Shane said, unable to muster up any particular venom. “What happened to the highly classified nuclear warhead?”

The committee didn’t seem amused, but then again, Shane hadn’t counted on it. He sighed and leaned forward a little. “Look, I plead guilty to the charges of insubordination. I would like to make a case that it was not misconduct, since I was doing my job of, you know, trying to uncover the truth. But we all know that’s a waste of time,” he said. “What I am going to do is tell you that Agent Bergara had nothing to do with this. He was only there to get me to come back, and what I’ve done does not reflect on him.”

“You are responsible for Unsolved Cases, and as such, we feel it is necessary to terminate the department,” Section Chief Ryder told him. He didn’t have to tell Shane he was fired - that was evident. Before Shane could even reiterate his point, Bennett spoke up.

“As your junior, Agent Bergara will face a probation for insubordination, but he will be allowed to resume his work in another department.”

All the fight left Shane with his exhalation. He slumped back in his seat, nodding tiredly. They’d had a good run. Shane was grateful for it. At least Ryan would be fine, and that was all that mattered.

When Shane left the room, feeling tired and filthy from traveling, he was surprised to find that Ryan had waited for him, sitting in the same spot Shane had waited for him.  His legs were splayed open, his hands clasped together and strand of his black hair had fallen across his slanted eyes, and it hurt Shane to look at him. Quickly, Shane pasted on a grin and said, “I’m going to see how many files I can smuggle with me on my way out!”

Ryan’s face fell. Shane’s heart ached at the open hurt in his eyes, and he hurried to add, “You’re fine, Spooky. Unsolved and me, we’re done. But you’re good, you can come back.”

“Oh, Shane, no,” Ryan whispered and stood up. Shane didn’t know how to deal with the sympathy, so he turned away.

“It’s okay, Ryan,” he said, and he meant it. “You were meant for better things than me, anyway.”

There were a lot of things Shane wanted to say, but none that he was able to, so he started to walk down the hallway. Time to pack it up, empty the office, move on with his life. Shane could do that. He was good at moving on.

* * *

Shane had been kidding about smuggling out the cases, but he did flick through a couple of them, thoughtfully. He wondered about their fate, if Ryan would be able to keep them from being shredded. So many cases, gathering dust, never to be solved. He sighed and looked at that dumb poster he’d gotten for Ryan what felt like a lifetime ago, and wondered if Ryan would let him keep it, as memorabilia.

Unbidden, he was accosted by the memory of Ryan smiling up at him, shining with sweat and completely pliant under him, trusting and open like he’d never been hurt in the past. He deserved better, Shane thought and pushed a hand over his eyes. He deserved to build his career without Shane’s baggage.

Shane managed to scrounge up a cardboard box and gathered most of the personal detritus that had washed up at the office over the years - among others, a few ties he’d forgotten around the office after a long day, a snow globe paperweight that sent up a flurry around the Washington Monument when Shane picked it up, a cassette tape of Mario Savio’s 1964 speech that probably would have gotten him suspended earlier if his superiors had known about it, a chipped mug from his years in England, with the text so faded you could barely make out the “Keep Calm And Carry On”.

A fitting adage, Shane thought as he hefted the box up on his hip and took the elevator to the ground floor to walk out. He was doing just that, keeping calm and carrying on. He might be leaving the best thing that ever happened to him behind, but - and he refused to feel a pang of regret - that was life sometimes.

Shane couldn’t keep his traitorous mind from wondering whether or not Ryan would still call him, if Ryan would pick up the phone if Shane called him, when he put the box in the trunk of his car.

“Chin up,” he muttered to himself, gazing at the chipped mug. “You’ve suffered heavier things.”

He slammed the trunk shut and when he turned around, he was completely unprepared to come face to face with Ryan himself; he stumbled a  little, had to put a hand on this car to steady himself. Ryan was breathing heavily, like he’d run - his shoulders heaved with each breath. That lock of his black hair, otherwise so carefully combed back and to the side, had fallen across his forehead that was shiny with sweat, and his hands were clenched into fists by his sides.

“In order to prove something as real, scientifically, there has to be a way to prove it doesn’t exist,” Ryan said, and his voice was rough, laced with severity. “And I get that you can never prove ghosts don’t exist, so we can never definitively prove they exist, either. And I guess it’s the same for aliens, UFOs, whatever.”

“Ryan,” Shane interrupted weakly. “What are you talking about?”

Ryan straightened up, chest still heaving with his labored breathing as he jabbed a finger in Shane’s chest. “What we _can_ prove, however, is a fucking government conspiracy.”

Shane stared, and Ryan’s dark eyes didn’t waver for a second. “I handed in my resignation,” he said, and Shane’s brain ground to a halt. “Two week’s notice. I have contacts in California, they’re regular conspiracy nuts but they might have some leads. I’m going to go there and talk to them, see what I can do.”

“Wait, you- what?” Shane tried, but Ryan only jabbed his finger into his chest again.

“The government is hiding something and we can’t let that slide,” he said.

“We?” was all Shane managed. His knees felt like they were about to give up on him.

“Come with me to California,” Ryan said, and there was a note of breathlessness to his voice, like he was putting it all on Shane’s answer. Shane swallowed.

“I can’t believe you,” he said at last and Ryan shook his head.

“You fucking better,” he said and pressed his palm flat against Shane’s chest. “Come with me Shane, please.”

They were in the middle of the god damn Hoover building parking lot, in the middle of the sunny DC day, but Shane grabbed Ryan’s face with both of his hands, because fuck it, they’d already been fired, and kissed him.

“Of course I’ll come with you,” he murmured against Ryan’s lips, and he felt Ryan smile.

* * *

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The way I see it, the boys go out to California and do some good work on uncovering that government conspiracy. The Try Guys are the Lone Gunmen (except Eugene who is Krycek, probably), and when Shane and Ryan make enough fuss the Bureau sends a couple of agents after them, one of whom is Steven Lim and the other is his partner Andrew Ilnyckyj. But this is all hypothetical headcanons, so like. Feel free to disregard.
> 
> Well, that's it folks! Thank you so much reading, please consider telling me your thoughts and/or feelings about it. If not here, come talk to me on tumblr dot com at [trailsofpaper](http://trailsofpaper.tumblr.com/)


End file.
